£5, 




Class_h- / 2 1^., 
hik-Kkl 






Dutch Village Communities 



HUDSON RIVER 



"The Government of the United States is not the result of special creation but of 
evolution. . . . 

"In the deepest and widest sense our American history does not begin with the 
Declaration of Independence, or even with the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth ; 
but it descends in unbroken continuity from the days when stout Arminius in the 
forests of northern Germany successfully defied the might of imperial Rome." 

— John Fiske. 

"The State of New York, once New Netherlands, affords us the remarkable phe- 
nomenon of a land settled by one body of Teutonic settlers and afterwards by the 
accidents of warfare transferred to another. The two sets of colonists were both of 
the same original stock and the same original speech ; but the circumstances of their 
several liistories had made them practically strangers to each other. On the Nether- 
Dutch of Holland and Zealand transplanted to the New World came in the Nether- 
Dutch of England. . . . Here is a field of special interest." — Freeman. 

"But they [the Dutch] brought the patience, the enterprise and the courage, the 
indomitable spirit, and the hatred of tyranny, into which they had been born, into 
which their nation had been baptized with blood. 

" Education came with them ; the free schools, in which Holland had led the van 
of the world, being early transplanted to these shores; ... an energetic Christian 
faith came with them, with its Bibles, its ministers, its interpreting books."— iJ. S. Storrs. 

" The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colo- 
nies in the United States; and they divide the glory of having set the example of 
public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, the 
United Provinces were their model of a federal uuion."— Bancroft. 



JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 
Historical and Political Science 

HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor. 



History is past Politics and Politics present History — Freeman 



FOURTH SERIES 

I 



Dutch Village Communities 



HUDSON RIVER 



By IRVING ELTING, A. B. 



BALTIMORE 

N. Murray, Publication Agent, Johns Hopkins University 

JANUARY, 1886 



Copyright, 1886, by N. Murray. 



JOHN MURPHY A CO., PRINTERS, 
BALTIMORE. 






DUTCH VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 

ON THE 

HUDSON RIVER.' 



No two rivers have been oftener compared than the Rhine 
and the Hudson, and the latter has sometimes been termed 
the " Rhine of America." In interest, in importance, and in 
beautiful scenery, they have much in common. Yet the com- 
parisons between them, likely to be made by travellers, are 
chiefly of difference rather than of likeness. The Rhine 
which, rising in the Alps, pushes its way between France 
and Germany, through the Netherlands and, with divided 
channel, out into the Northern Sea, is a narrower, swifter 
runnino-, more tortuous stream than the Hudson, which in 
fact is, in its later course, not properly a river but a f Jord- 
an inlet of the sea — with one hundred and fifty miles of tide- 
water ebbing and flowing in a broader bed, and between 
higher mountains, than the Rhine can boast. The Rhine 
is famous for its castle-crowned hills, illustrating with their 
ruins an historical tale begun in the time of Caesar. About 
the Hudson, our own Washington Irving has thrown a grace- 



1 In the preparation of this paper much of the material lias been gleaned 
from records in County Clerks' offices, but special acknowledgments are due 
to the writings of Laveleye, Sir Henry Maine, J. R. Green, Dr. O'Callaghan, 
Mr. Brodhead, and Gen. J. Watts de Peyster ; also to the assistance, gene- 
rously rendered in the loan of books, documents, and MISS., by Mr. Sanmel 
Burhans of New York, by the officers of the Huguenot liank, the Rev. Ame 
Vennema, Messrs. Jacob Elting and Edmund Eltinge of New Paltz, and by 
Messrs. Wallace Bruce, C. B. Herrick, and Erank Hasbrouck of Pough- 
keepsie. 

5 



6 , Dutch Village Communities 

fill mantle of later romance and legend, and in variety and 
grandeur of natural scenery, the "Rhine of America" sur- 
passes her foreign sister. 

Between these two rivers, there exists, unnoticed by the 
traveller, and unnoted, for the most i)art, even by the his- 
torian, a bond of union formed by the institutional relation- 
ship of the village communities which have had their 
existence, with similar customs, similar laws, and similar 
forms of government, upon the banks of each stream. 

It is only within a comparatively few years that, by reason 
of the researches of Von Maurer, Sir Henry Maine, and 
Laveleye, the term "village community" has gained a special 
and instructive significance for the student of institutional 
history. It has come to represent a civil unit, universal to 
all peoples — at least to those of Aryan stock — at a certain 
stage of the progress in civilization ; with collective property 
or ownership of land in common, and with a representative 
governing body chosen by, and from, the co-owners of the 
domain, to administer the common affairs, as its distinctive 
characteristics. Absolute and individual rights in land, as 
we know them, Von Maurer and his followers assert to be 
of recent origin; separate property, they say, has grown, by 
a series of changes, out of common or collective ownership.^ 



' The writer of this paper states this theory of the origin and growth of 
property rights among the Aryan peoples, because it is held by the majority 
of students who have given their attention to the subject ; but he is not 
unmindful of the fiict that the pains-taking and scholarly researches of his 
friend Dr. Denman W. Ross in America, and the investigations of others, 
e.g. Fustel de Coulanges, in Europe, liave led them to oppose the view taken 
by Sir Henry Maine and to maintain that separate individual ownership pre- 
ceded the various forms of ownership in common. A decision of this question, 
if it were possible, is not necessary for the present purpose of examining the 
village communities on the Hudson River. Whether or not the distribu- 
tion of common lands among the primitive Germanic tribes was originally 
per stirpes and not per capita,— was, in short, collective tenure and not com- 
munism,— the local institutions of the Dutch villages in ^'e\v York can 
hardly fail to impress the disciple of cither theory with the closeness, and 
consequent importance, of the relationship of Old World and ^'cw World 
types of government. 



On the Hudson River. ^ 7 

Nowhere does this development of property rights in their 
successive forms exhibit itself more clearly than among the 
Germanic tribes which the Romans first met as pastoral 
groups moving from place to place, and subsisting upon the 
results of the chase, or ujjon the cattle which they herded on 
the common lands where they chanced to be. In this stage 
of race development there is essentially no holding of landed 
property, not even in common. That comes when the pas- 
toral period is succeeded by the agricultural. The tillage 
of the soil brings with it ownership of land, but in the first 
instance a common ownership. The pastoral habits clung to 
the tribes, and they moved about, cultivating fresh lands of 
the uuoccitpied territory each year.^ As the agricultural 
system became more important, the village community crys- 
tallized. The territory of the tribe was the Mark, in which 
each family was entitled to the temporary enjoyment of a 
share.^ The woodland and pasturage were entirely common, 
and so continued even after the arable land had, in the prog- 
ress towards individual property, been allotted and rendered 
subject to hereditary rights. Caesar and Tacitus testify to 
the existence of the peculiar features of the village community 
among the Germanic tribes of the Rhine countries.^ Lave- 
leye asserts that " the triennial rotation of crops was intro- 
duced into Germany, .... before the time of Charlemagne." * 
..." The parcels in each field had to be tilled at the same 
time, devoted to the same crops, and abandoned to the com- 
mon pasture at the same period, according to the rule of 
Flurzwang, or compulsory rotation. The inhabitants assem- 
bled to deliberate on all that concerned the cultivation, and 
to determine the order and time of the various agricultural 



^ Laveleye, Primitive Property, p. 102. 
^ Laveleye, Primitive Property, p. 105. 

^ Laveleye, Primitive Property, p. 105 (Citing De Bel. Gal. L. VI. c. 29, 
and Tac. Germ. c. VII). 

* Laveleye, Primitive Property, p. 110. 



8 . Dutch Village Communities 

operations. ^ The member of the German village community 
was a/ree man in the best sense of the word ; he had a share 
in the common property, he had a voice in the assembly of his 
equals, and was subject to no arbitrary ruler. It is not 
strange that groups of these freemen were able to make them- 
selves masters of the empire of the Caesars. 

Yet their very power had in it the seeds of its own destruc- 
tion. The force of the combined freemen of the tribe or 
canton led to conquest over other tribes ; conquest led to the 
acquisition of the territory of the conquered, and this in turn 
resulted in that unequal division of the acquired territory, 
the outcome of which was the feudal system. The leader of 
the band of freemen became the most important p'fersonage in 
the group; equality ceased to exist: the chief took the largest 
portion of the new land, and gave it out in parcels to his 
under-companions in arms, thus becoming, in time, the lord 
of the manor, subject indeed to his king, — the sovereign of 
the whole territory, — but having within his own manor arbi- 
trary rule, and having under him and subject to his entire 
control, men who, in early Germanic times, would have been 
his equals. 

Thus at the end of the tenth century in western Europe, 
but especially in France, the conditions of society were in 
many respects the very opposite of those by means of which 
the primitive German village community fostered the prin- 
ciples of freedom, equality, and representative government. 
The voice of the people in government had practically ceased 
to be heard. '^ Land has become the sacramental tie of all 
public relations ; the poor man depends u])on the rich, not as 
his chosen patron, but as the owner of the land he cultivates, 
the lord of the court to which he does suit and service, the 
leader whom he is bound to follow to the host." ^ 

The earlier, freer, community-life, however, with the cus- 
toms of common land tenure and of government by freemen 



' Laveleye, Primitive Property, p. 111. 
- Stubbs' Constitutional History, I, p. 167. 



On the Hudson River. 9 

met in general assembly, survived the changes just described, 
in some of the more secluded portions of the country, nota- 
bly in the forest regions of the lower Palatinate east of the 
Rhine, ' and in those northern provinces of the Netherlands— 
Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe— whose free peoples Rome 
never conquered, and whose right of self-government no 
haughty baron ever suppressed. Throughout the Nether- 
lands, in fact, the feudal system, though prevailing, never 
obtained the firm foothold it gained in France, and even in 
more distant England. The industrial spirit and the growth 
of the importance of towns among the Dutch had modified 
the feudal system in Holland in a marked degree.^ " Hol- 
land was an aggregate of towns each providing for its own 
defence, administering its own finances, and governing itself 
by its own laws."^ Each town was governed by "a ^Wet- 
houderschap' or Board of Magistrates, consisting of several 
burgomasters* and a certain number of Schepens or Alder- 
men."^ The term of office was usually annual. The burgo- 
masters and schepens were chosen by the eight or nine "good- 
men" who were "elected by the ' Vroedschap,"^ or great coun- 
cil of the town, which was itself composed, in most cases, of 
all the inhabitants who possessed a certain property qualifica- 
tion. There was also another important officer, named the 
^schout,' who, in early times, was appointed by the Count, 
out of a triple nomination by the wethouders. The func- 
tions of the schout— whose name, according to Grotius, was 



1 Dr. H. B. Adams, in "The Germanic Origin of New England Towns," 
Vol. I of this series, pp. 13, 14, describes the primitive character of the 
villages now to be found in the Odenwald and Black Forest. 

2 B^i-odhead's History of the State of New York, 1609-1664, p. 192. 

3 Brodhead's History of the State of New York, p. 453. 

* This privilege of " burgher-recht," which had to be acquired to entitle a 
resident to every municipal franchise, introduced some inequality among 
the people. 

* Brodliead's History of the State of New York, pp. 4o3-4. 

« Motley, Dutch Republic, I, p. 37, mentions the " Vroedachappen " or 
councillors. 



10 Dutch Village Communities 

an abbreviation of ' schuld-rechter/ or a judge of crimes — 
were somewhat analagous to those of bailiff or county sheriff; 
combining, however, with them some of the duties of a prose- 
cuting attorney." ^ 

In the course of the fifteenth century " the inhabitants 
were authorized ... to select from among themselves a cer- 
tain number, double or triple, from which the head of the 
government elected and appointed such as it considered best 
qualified to act as 'schepens ' or magistrates."^ 

As early as 1295 the " Tribunal of Well-born Men," or of 
" Men's Men," as it was sometimes called, was instituted in 
the Low Countries. It originally had separate criminal and 
civil jurisdiction. Afterwards the Courts were united, and 
the bailiff of each district was allowed to administer justice 
in both civil and criminal cases with " Thirteen elected good 
Men." This tribunal, which resembled the modern jury, con- 
tinued until the spring of 1614, when the number was altered 
to "Nine Well-born Men" who administered justice together.^ 

" The States-General," says Brodhead, " was, in one sense, 
an aggregate assembly of the States of the provinces, each of 
which might send an unlimited number of deputies." * 

"The sovereign power of the province did not, however, 
reside in the States of Holland, but in the constituencies of 



' Brodhead, supra, pp. 453-4. 

''O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 391. 

^O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, II., p. 40. 

In view of the foregoing statements relating to early town government 
in the Rhine Countries, the position taken by Palfrey in his History of New 
England seems surprising. In V^ol. I., pp. 27o-(), he says: "The institu- 
tion of towns had its origin in Massachusetts, and was borrowed thence by 
the other governments." He speaks of the selectmen as if they were indi- 
genous to New England, whereas they are found to be as old as the history 
of Germanic institutions. Certainly, if the ancestors of our Hudson Eiver 
settlers had, in Holland, chosen their selectmen, varying in number from 
thirteen to eight, from a time as early as the thirteenth century and prob- 
ably much earlier, their Dutch descendants did not need to borrow from 
Massachusetts " the institution of towns." 

* Bi-odliead's History of the State of New York, pp. 454-5. 



On the Hudson River. 11 

the deputies. The real authorities were the college of nobles, 
and the municipal councils of the towns. To them each 
deputy was responsible for his vote, and under their instruc- 
tions alone he acted. Thus the government of Holland, in 
fact, rested mainly upon its people."^ In 1477, the first 
assembly of the States-General resulted in a charter of liber- 
ties, which after successive demands by the towns, "guaranteed 
and confirmed the ancient privileges of the municipal govern- 
ments, and recognized the right of the towns, at all times, to 
confer with each other, and with the States of the Netherlands. 
It declared that no taxes should be imposed without the con- 
sent of the States ; and it distinctly secured the freedom of 
trade and commerce. ^^ Thus at the close of the sixteenth 
century, the liberty-loving Netherlanders had not only pre- 
served much of the freedom of the people, which the feudal 
system had tended to crush out, but they had also adhered to 
a freedom of trade which brought them wealth, and made 
them the most important maritime country of the world. 

Just at this time— the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury—the enterprising East India Company sent out from 
Amsterdam a small vessel under command of an English 
sailor to discover, if possible, a northwest passage to India. 
So it happened that in the fall of 1609,— nearly a dozen years 
before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth,— Hendrick Hud- 
son, in his Dutch vessel the "Half Moon," sailed into the 
mouth of the river which now bears his name. Five years 
later the States-General of Holland granted a charter to the 
United New Netherland Company, giving it exclusive trade 
within the territory to which Holland considered that Hud- 
son's discovery entitled her. Its object was not colonization 
and improvement of the land, but the monopoly of the fur- 
trade with the Indians. Three trading posts were established 
on the river, at what is now New York, at Albany, and at 



1 Brodhead's History of the State of New York, p. 452. 
- Brodheud's History of the State of New Yorli, p. 437. 



12 Dutch Village Communities 

Rondout, — the mouth of the river, the head of navigation, 
and about midway between the two. 

The charter of the first company expired in 1618, and in 
1621 the States-General granted another to the West India 
Company, with the monopoly of exclusive trade as before. 
The general government of the company was lodged in a 
board or assembly of nineteen delegates. They might choose 
a Director-General and Council who " were invested with all 
powers, judicial, legislative and executive, but the resolutions 
and customs of Fatherland were to be received as the para- 
mount rule of action."^ 

In 1624, in the same ship with Peter Minuit, — the first 
Director-General of the West India Company, — there came to 
New Netherland some families of Walloons from the frontier 
of Belgium and France. After a temporary settlement on 
Staten Island, they removed to the north-western extremity of 
Long Island on a bay called the " Wahle-Bocht," or "the 
bay of the foreigners," where they established a permanent 
home. With the exception of such small accessions, compar- 
atively nothing was done towards advancing settlement and 
agriculture during the seven years which followed the incor- 
poration of the West India Company. The States-General, 
accordingly, determined to plant "colonies" or seignorial 
fiefs, or manors, in the new country, and in June, 1629, ratified 
the document called "Freedoms and Exemptions," granted 
by the Assembly of XIX of the West India Company, " to 
all such as shall plant any colonies in Xew Xetherland." 
This charter established a monopoly in land, as the previous 
one had in trade, and put the valley of the Hudson largely 
into the hands of proprietors who were favorites of the 
company. Each proprietor or " Patroon " was to undertake 
to plant a colony of fifty souls, upwards of fifteen years old, 
and for that purpose might extend his limits four (that is 
sixteen English) miles on one side of the river, or half that 

' O'Callaghan, History of New Netlierland, I., p. 90. 



On the Hudson River. 13 

distance on both sides, "and so far into the country as the 
situation of the occupiers will permit." ' The company was 
to retain the intervening lands, and no one was allowed to 
come within thirty miles distance without the consent of the 
" Patroon ; " subject, however, to the order of the commander 
and council. The Patroons were to hold the lands " as a 
perpetual inheritance," establish officers and magistrates m 
the cities, and dispose of their property by will. The colo- 
nists were to be freed by the company from payment of cus- 
toms, taxes, excise, or other contributions, for the space of ten 
years, after which they should pay the usual exactions. The 
most liberal clause of the charter is the one which grants to 
other persons, who should go and settle there, but without the 
privileges of the Patroons, as much land (with the approbation 
of the Director-General and Council) "as they shall be able 
properly to improve." ^ 

The Patroons and colonists were to endeavor to support a 
minister and a schoolmaster, that thus the service of God and 
the zeal for religion may not grow cool, and be neglected 
among them ; and that they do, for the first, procure a com- 
forter of the sick there." ^ But the colonists were prohibited 
from manufacturing, " on pain of being banished, and as per- 
jurers to be arbitrarily punished." The Patroons were enti- 
tled to the services of the colonists, and were to be supplied 
with " blacks " by the company. Thus the feudal tenure of 
Europe, in a somewhat modified form, but conferring less 
liberty than the Dutch had enjoyed in the Fatherland, was 
imposed upon the settlers of the Hudson river valley by the 
States-General of Holland acting under the instigation of the 
Assembly of XIX. of the West India Company. " While 
it secured the right of the Indian to the soil and enjoined 



» O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 113. (Citing Hoi. Doc. 
ii., pp. 98, 99. 

^O'Callaghan, History of New Netlierland, I., p. 118. 
'O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 119. 



14 Dutch Village Communities 

schools and churches, it scattered the seeds of servitude, 
slavery and aristocracy. While it gave to freemen as much 
land as they could cultivate, and exempted colonists from 
taxation for ten years, it fettered agriculture by restricting 
commerce and prohibiting manufactures." ^ 

Kilien Van Rensselaer, a merchant of Amsterdam and one 
of the directors of the West India Company, became a 
Patroon in 1630 under this "Freedoms and Exemptions" 
charter of 1629, and secured the grant of a large tract of 
land on both sides of the Hudson, including the present site 
of Albany. As Patroon he was " empowered to administer 
civil and criminal justice in person or by deputy within his 
colonic, to appoint local officers and magistrates ; to erect 
courts and to take cognizance of all crimes committed within 
his limits." 2 

Nominally an appeal lay from the manorial courts to the 
Director-General and Council at Fort Amsterdam, in cases 



' Moulton, History of New York, pp. 387, 388. 

It should be especially noted that in this earliest charter of 1629, not- 
withstanding its restriction of civil liberties, the Dutch recognized the prime 
importance of establishing in their colony here the foundations of religion 
and education. So intimately were the two connected that, as Dr. Baird 
mentions in his "Huguenot Emigration to America" (Vol. I., p. 185), in 
1656 some colonists set sail for New Nethsrlands in three ships, one of 
which carried a schoolmaster who was to be also " a comforter of the sick," 
till the minister arrived. As early as 1633, Everardus Bogardus, the first 
minister in New Amsterdam, and Adam Eoelandsen, the schoolmaster, 
came over from Holland together. — (Brodhead, p. 223). 

Of the character and influence of the religious life of the Hudson river 
colonists, something will be said in connection with the account of New 
Paltz, which in most respects may be called the typical village community 
of the Hudson river. 

The part which Dutch influence played in shaping the educational life of 
America, has not been given the general recognition it deserves. Our free 
public school system, of which we are so justly proud, seems to have its 
beginnings distinctly traceable to the earliest life of the Dutch colonies 

-O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 320. 
(For Van Rensselaer Patent, see Docs, relating to Colonial Hist. N. Y., 
Vol. I., p. 44). 



On the Hudson River. 15 

affecting life or limb, or where the amount in controversy was 
over twenty dollars ; but this right to appeal was rendered for 
the most i)art nugatory, by the exaction of a promise from the 
colonist at the time of settlement, that he woukl not resort to 
the higher tribunal. Thus, besides being subject to the laws 
prevailing elsewhere in New Netherland,— the civil code, the 
ordinances of the Province of Holland and of the United 
Netherlands, the edicts of the West India Company and of the 
Director and Council at Manhattan,— the colonists of the 
manor were also subject to such laws as the Patroon or his 
deputies might establish. ^ "Theoretically," says Mr. Brod- 
head, " the Patroon was always present in his court baron. ^ 
Practically, the government of the colony was administered 
by a court composed of two commissaries and two schepens, 
assisted by the colonial secretary and the schout."^ The 
Patroon bore the expenses of preparing the land for occu- 
pancy. He set off farms, erected farm buildings, stocked 
them with tools and cattle, and so brought the farmer to his 



here in America, and to have had its prototype in " the free schools m 
which," says Dr. Storrs (American Spirit and the Genesis of It, p. 47), 
" Holland had led the van of the world." Mr. Motley, in a letter to the 
St. Nicholas Society (cited by Dr. Storrs, supra), intimates that the New 
England colonists gained their educational impulses more from the Nether- 
lands than from their own country. " It is very pleasant to reflect," he says, 
" that the New England pilgrims, during their residence in the glorious 
country of your ancestry, found already established there a system of schools 
which" John of Nassau] eldest brother of William the Silent, had recom- 
mended in tliese words : ' You must urge upon the States-General that they 
should establish free schools, where children of quality as well as of poor 
families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and 
brought up. This would be the greatest and most useful work you could 
ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands them- 
selves.' ... This was the feeling about popular education in the Nether- 
lands during the 16th century." In New Amsterdam in 1647, the Nine 
Men approved arrangements " for finishing the church and reorganizing the 
public schools." — (Brodhead, Hist. N. Y., p. 476). 

1 Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 305 ; O'Callaghan's Hist, of N. Y., p. 321. 

" "Studies" I., VII, Old Maryland Manors, pp. 11, 12. 

=> Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 305. 



16 Dutch Village Communities 

work unhampered by want of capital. In return for these 
outlays the civil code gave the Patroon many of the rights 
incident to lordship under the feudal system. He was not 
only entitled to the rent ^ fixed upon, but also to a portion of 
the increase of the stock and of the produce of the farm. 
Even to the remainder he had pre-emptive right, and the 
farmer was not at liberty to sell any of his produce elsewhere, 
until it had been refused by the Patroon. He required each 
colonist to grind all grain at his mill, to obtain license from 
him to fish or hunt within the domain, and as " lord of the 
manor/' he was the legal heir of all who died intestate within 
the "colonic." 2 

This manor, thus early created under Dutch rule,^ may 
stand as a type of the later ones, most of which were estab- 
lished after the English obtained possession of the territory, 
and before the close of the 17th century. The proprietary 
on the Hudson river, therefore, had the power of establishing 
the feudal system as they had in Maryland, where, as Mr. 
Geo. Wm. Brown has stated, " express provision was made 
for manors, lords of manors and manorial courts." * 

In the patent for the Livingston manor given under the 
hand and seal of Gov. Dongan, July 22, ] 686, provision is 
made for constituting " in the said Lordship and JNIannor one 
Court Leet and one Court Baron ^ ... to be kept by the 
said Robert Livingston his Heirs and assignes for ever or 
theire or any of theire Stewards Deputed and appointed with 



* The rent was usually paid in kind on the Hudson as it was in " Old 
Maryland Manors." See "Studies," I., VII., p. 10. 

"Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 305 ; O'Callaghan's Hist, of New Nether- 
land, I., pp. 325-6. 

'The summary above is from the Charter of Kensselaerswyck. In 1646, 
Kieft's manorial grant to Van der Donck was of territory on which Yonkers 
is now the chief town. 

* Geo. Wm. Brown, The Origin and Growth of Civil Liberty in Maryland 
(1850), p. 7. Conf. Maine, Village Communities, pp. 139, 140. 

*"The ownership of the manorial estate carried with it in New York the 
right to hold two courts," as Mr. Johnson says it did in Maryland — 
"Studies," supra, p. 11. 



On the Hudson River. 17 

full and ample Power and authority to Dcstraiue for tlie 
Rents Services and other Sumes of Mony Payable by Reason 
of the Premises and all other Lawfull Reraedyes and meanes 
for the haveing . . . and Enjoyeing the Premissesse and 
every parte and Parcell of the same and all Wasts Estrayes 
Wrecks Deodands Goods of felons happening and being for- 
feited within the said Lordshipp and Mannor,"^ together 
with the right of advowson and other incidents of feudal ten- 
ure, in which these Hudson river domains of the Patroons 
were closely allied to the "Old Maryland Manors" as set 
forth in Mr. Johnson's interesting monograph. ^ 

So distasteful, to the Dutch settlers who had enjoyed a 
greater freedom in the Fatherland, were these restrictions of 
the manors, that the settlements did not rapidly increase.^ 
The beginnings of governmental life on the Hudson river, 
therefore, were unfortunate for the growth of free institutions. 
Monopoly — in trade, in land,^ and in government — seemed to 
be the foundation on which the settlers in New Netherland 
must build their state.^ 



' Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., III., pp. 375-6. 

*" Studies," supra. 

^Evidence of the unpopularity of the manor government may be found 
in a letter written by the Earl of Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, dated, 
"New Yorke, Jan? 2'^ 1700/1." He says: "Mr. Livingston has on his 
great grant of 16 miles long and 24 broad but 4 or 5 cottagers, as I am told, 
men that live in vassallage under him and work for him and are too poor to 
be farmers having not wherewithal! to buy Cattle to stock a farm. Collonel 
Courtland has also on his great grants 4 or 5 of these poor families ; " other 
like cases being mentioned. 

^ In the same letter he adds : " I believe there are not less than seven 
millions of acres granted away in 13 grants, and all of them uninhabited 
. . . except M"^ Ranslaer's grant, which is 24 miles square, and on which 
the town of Albany stands." — Docs, relating to the Hist, of N. Y., IV., 
pp. 822-3. * 

' The opinion, here expressed, that the manor system on the Hudson river 
hampered the early development of representative government, may seem 
to be inconsistent with Mr. Johnson's statement (Old Maryland Manors, 
supra, p. 20) that, " it should not be thought that the aristocratic character 

2 



18 Dutch Tillage Communities 

No Dutch village community seemed likely to rise under 
the first charter of 1629, and the need of inducing settlers to 
colonize New Netherland for agricultural purposes convinced 
the States-General of Holland that the monopoly they had 
unwisely established must, to some extent, be broken. In 
1638 trade was taken from the exclusive privileges of the 
West India Company and made free. In 1640 there was 
granted a more liberal charter,^ by which any one who should 
go to New Netherland with five souls over fifteen years of 
age was to be acknowledged a master or colonist, and entitled 
to claim 100 Morgen (200 acres) of land. When the settle- 
ments of these masters increased so as to become villages, 
towns, or cities, the company was bound to confer upon them 
subaltern or municipal governments. ^ 



of the manor was injurious to the growth of liberal ideas. The manor was 
a self-governing community." Is it not true, however, that it was "a self- 
governing community," only in so far as the power of the lord of the manor 
had been restricted by the people ? And would not the " liberal ideas " of 
the Dutch settlers have borne earlier and richer fruit if the chai-acter of the 
manor had not checked their growth ? This is evidently the opinion of Mr, 
Fernowwho (in his introduction to vol. XIII. of Docs, relating to Col. Hist, 
of N. Y.), says that the " object of the Patroons had been, at first when they 
obtained their privileges in 1629, rather a participation in the Indian trade 
than the colonization of the country ; their new plan was to divide the pro- 
vince into manors for a privileged class to the exclusion of the hardy and 
industrious pioneer and sturdy and independent yoeman." All the more 
notewoi'thy and commendable, is the persistent and successful struggle of 
the "sturdy and independent yoeman" of Holland in fighting his way 
towards free representative government when opposed by such extensive 
manorial grants to the Patroons, who were in favor with the powerful West 
India Company. 

' Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., pp. 119-123. 

- The chai-ter of 1040, which thus contained more liberal provisions for 
agricultural settlement, still retained clauses for erecting manors under 
Patroons ; but they could only claim about a quarter of the territory which 
they might have claimed under previous charters, and their authority over 
the colonists was somewhat lessened. In 1655, the Directors of the West 
India Company reiterated their disinclination, any longer to grant colonies 
like Eensselaerswyck to Patroons. Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., 
XIV., pp. 832-3. 



On the Hudson River. 19 

The Dutch settlers, at this time established in ]S"ew Amster- 
dam and vicinity, had given Kieft, the Director-General, to 
understand plainly that they demanded a voice in the govern- 
ment. In 1641, the brutal murder of Claes Smits by an 
Indian was the occasion of the first recognition by the 
Director-General of the people's demand. " All the masters 
and heads of families, residents of New Amsterdam, and its 
neighborhood, were therefore, invited to assemble in the fort 
on the 28th day of August then and there to determine on 
' something of the first importance.' " ^ This, the first popular 
assembly in New Netherland, promptly chose " Twelve Select 
]Men"^^all emigrants from Holland — to consider the prop- 
ositions submitted by the Director. ^ 

The step towards freedom gained at this time was never 
lost. Before Kieft dismissed them,^ as having served in 
settling the Indian ai5fair, the purpose for which they were 
elected, the " Twelve Men " had demanded for New Amster- 
dam, and the neighboring settlements, the popular representa- 
tion of Holland, urging that " the Council of a small village 
in Fatherland consists of five @. seven Schepens." ^ In 1643, 



• O'Callaghan, Plist. of New Netherland, I., p. 241. 

*Mr. Palfrey would apparently have us believe that this selection of rep- 
resentatives by the Dutch settlers at New Amsterdam must somehow be 
accounted for by a borrowing of the methods of the Dorchester colonists in 
Massachusetts (see p. 10, supra). Neither perhaps had need to borrow 
what had been known for centuries to the ancestors of both, but certainly 
the Dutch knew, even better than the English, the advantages of repre- 
sentative government. 

=» Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 317. 

M-Iol., Doc. III., pp. 175-180, cited by O'Callaghan, Hist. N. N., Vol. I., 
pp. 248-9. The Director evidently did not intend that the " Twelve Men " 
should have any permanent shar.e in the government. Whether he allowed 
them to be chosen merely "to serve him as a cloak, and as cats-paws," — per- 
haps to shield him from responsibility, as Van der Donck strenuously asserts, 
or Avhether for some more worthy purpose, the fact remains that it was a 
concession by the arbitrary ruler in the direction of representative govern- 
ment. 

*Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 202. 



20 Dutch Village Communities 

" Eiitjht Men " were chosen by the commonalty and addressed 
the West India Company npon the serions Indian troubles. 
They renewed, in vigorous language/ the demand of the 
" Twelve Men " for representative government, and in 1646 
the inhabitants of the village of " Breuckelen " (Brooklyn) 
were given the municipal privileges they desired. "They 
were to have the right of electing two schepens or magistrates, 
with full judicial powers, as in the Fatherland. Those who 
opposed the magistrates in the discharge of their duties were 
to be deprived of all share in the common lands adjoining the 
village."^ Thus at the first conferring of self-government 
upon this Dutch village, named for an ancient village in 
Utrecht, the evidence of a system of common land tenure is 
met with. 

Under Stuyvesant, as under Kieft, the people of New 
Amsterdam clamored for their rights. Reforms were pressed 
upon him. New Amsterdam was in bad condition. Most of 
the lots were unimproved. Hog-pens, " little houses," and 
other nuisances encroached upon the public streets, and, in 
1647, "fence viewers" were appointed, by whom, in addition 
to other duties, every new building had to be approved. In 
the same year, Stuyvesant and his council granted to the 
inhabitants of the Island of Manhattan and two or three adja- 
cent towns, the privilege of nominating " a double number 



' Docs. Kelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 213. " It is impossible," they 
say in their letter to the Directors, "ever to settle this country until a dif- 
ferent system be introduced here," and they suggest the election of repre- 
sentatives by the people to vote as deputies with the Director and Council. 

* Brodhead, Hist, of jV. Y., pp. 421-2. It is curious to note the strength, at 
that early day, of the opinion that " public office is a public trust." At 
New Amsterdam, in April, 1654, the Director-General sends following order 
to one Jan Everson Boot, who had been elected schepen of " Breuckelen." 
" If you will not accept to serve as schepen for the welfare of the village of 
Breuckelen with other-, your fellow residents, then you must prepare 
yourself to sail in the ship 'King iSolomon ' for Holland, agreeably to your 
own utterance," he having said he would rather go than serve. Docs. 
Kelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIV., p. 255. 



On the Hudson River. 21 

of persons from the most notable, reasonable, honest and 
respectable of onr subjects, from whom we might select a 
single number of Nine Men to them best known, to confer 
with us and our council, as their Tribunes, on all means to 
promote the w^elfare of the commonalty as well as that of the 
country." ^ 

Not, however, until 1652 did the people succeed in obtain- 
ing for New Amsterdam itself a municipal form of govern- 
ment. In accordance with the 17th clause of the Provi- 
sional Order of 1650,^ it consisted of "one schout, two burgo- 
masters ^ and five schepens,^ to be elected by the citizens in 
the manner usual in ' this city of Amsterdam,' to act as a 
Court of Justice with the right of appeal in certain cases ' to 
the Supreme Court of Judicature.' " This advance towards 
a representative government in New Amsterdam marked the 
beginning of a new era throughout the whole of New Nether- 
land, which was not, however, without its struggles between 
the people and Stuyvesant's arbitrary exercise of power.^ In 



' O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netlierland, II., p. 39.— (Citing Alb. Eec. 
VII., pp. 72-74, 81-84.) 

These "Nine Men" were of more importance in the affairs of the colony 
than any previous representative body. — Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 474. 

* O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., p. 192.— (Citing Alb. Eec. 
IV., pp. 68, 72, 73, 75; VIII., pp. 8-13, 16-19, 42.) 

^ The name and office of the burgomaster in Holland may be traced as 
early as the 14th century. — O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., 
p. 211. 

* The word schepen, meaning, as here, one of the local magistrates iu 
Holland, is older still, probably originating about 1270, says one writer ; 
but tliat date is not early enough. The word was used in an instrument 
said to have been signed and sealed in 1217, and quoted by Motley, The 
Dutch Republic, I., p. 35. 

^ The difficulties with which the people had to contend are given a ludic- 
rous coloring in a letter from Van Dinelagen to Van der Donck : " To 
describe the state of this government to one well acquainted with it is a 
work of supererogation ; it is washing a black-a-moor white. Our Grand 
Muscovy Duke goes on as usual, resembling somewhat the wolf — tlie older 
he gets the worse he bites. He proceeds no longer by words or letters but 
by arrests and stripes."— O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netlierland, II., p. 170; 
citing llol. Doc. VI., pp. 5, 7, 53-00, 07, 08. The letter was in Latin. 



22 Dutch Village Communities 

April, 1652, Beverwyck was declared to be independent of 
the Patroon's colony, " and the germ of the present city of 
Albany was released from feudal jurisdiction," ^ its court 
being established at Fort Orange. Two years later, Breuck- 
elen and adjacent towns ^ secured the privilege from Stuyves- 
ant of having a greater number of schepens, and district 
courts were organized, (composed of delegates from each town- 
court, together with the schout,) which had general authority 
over roads, the establishment of churches and schools, and the 
making of local laws, subject to the approval of the provin- 
cial government.^ 

About the same time, there came an increase in immigration, 
both from abroad and from New England. English settlers, 
fleeing from the persecutions of New England, had already 
established themselves in towns under the Dutch govern- 
ment, which, in New Netherland, still allowed the broad 
religious toleration of Holland. With the exception of some 
persecution of the quakers under Stuyvesant's personal lead, 
the principles which made Holland the asylum of the perse- 
cuted were observed by the Dutch in America. There came 
to the Hudson river, Walloons from the Spanish Netherlands, 
Huguenots from France, Puritans from New England, and 
Waldenses from Piedmont, — all seeking freedom from perse- 
cution, and finding it in New Netherland rather than in New 
England, where, at this time in Massachusetts colony, civil 
rights were dependent upon church membership. In New 
Netherland, such rights, fought for step by step, depended 
simply upon the ownership in land, as did the rights of the 
members of the early Germanic village community. 
* Turning from this hasty sketch of the growth of repre- 
sentative government in New Amsterdam and vicinity before 
the year 1650, we may take this middle year of the 17th 



' Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 535. 
' Midwout and Amersfoort. 
'Brodhead's Hist, of N. Y., p. 580. 



On the Hudson River. 23 

century as an approximate starting point for an exami- 
ination in detail of the peculiar characteristics of the 
Dutch village communities ; for, from this time forward, the 
agricultural settlements increased more rapidly, and, under 
conditions of freer government, villages and towns grew 
up, on lands granted directly to those who were to culti- 
vate the soil. Hoping to advance such settlement, van Tien- 
hoven, the Dutch Secretary under Stuy vesant, sent information 
to Holland in March, 1650, in regard to taking up land in 
New Netherland. " Before beginning to build," he said, 
" 'twill above all things be necessary to select a well located 
spot on some river or bay, suitable for the settlement of a 
village or hamlet. This is previously properly surveyed and 
divided into lots, with good streets, according to the situation 
of the place. This hamlet can be fenced all around with high 
palisades or long boards and closed with gates. ^ . . . Out- 
side the village or hamlet, other land must be laid out which 
can in general be fenced and prepared at the most trifling 
expense." ^ 

The draft of " Freedoms and Exemptions," in the same year, 
(1650) states that, "on the arrival of the aforesaid persons in 
New Netherland they shall be allowed and granted the privi- 
lege of choosing and taking up under quit rent or as a fief, 
such parcels of land as they shall in any way be able to cul- 
tivate for the production of all sorts of fruits and crops of 
those parts," on condition that they should be deprived of the 
land, if it were not cultivated within a year. They were to 
" enjoy exemption from Tenths," for a term of — years, " and 



' This enclosure is clearly analogous to the Hedge of the early Teutonic 
village, which, through the Saxon Tun, is perpetuated in our English word, 
Town. For the existence of a similar survival in New England and a more 
complete statement of the interesting derivation of the word Town, see 
"Studies," I., "Germanic Origin of New England Towns," pp. 2G-31. 

'^Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., j.p. 365, 367-8. This may be 
called the Village Mark in New Netherland,— a larger tmvn around the 
smaller. 



24 Dutch Village Communities 

thenceforth one additional year's exemption for every legiti- 
mate child they shall convey thither or get there." They 
might also cut and draw timber from the public forests, and 
hunt and fish in the public woods and streams. ^ The com- 
pany sometimes advanced land, farm implements, and cattle, 
for the term of six years, the farmer being " bound to pay 
yearly one hundred guilders and eighty pounds of butter rent 
for the cleared land and bouwerie." ^ 

It has been noted ^ that as early as 1646, the village of 
Breuckelen had about it common lands in which the inhabi- 
tants had a share, to be taken as a penalty from those who 
opposed the schepens, or magistrates, of the town. In New 
Amsterdam itself, where the people had not at first settled for 
agricultural purposes, the right of pasturage in common lands 
prevailed. In 1649, the Director and Council passed a reso- 
lution to the effect that " the farmers on the Island Manhattan 
requesting by petition a free pasturage on the Island Man- 
hattan, between the plantation^ of Schepmoes and the fence 
of the Great Bouwery, No. 1, the petitioners' request is pro- 
visionally granted, and that no new plantation shall be made 
or granted between said fencing." ^ What is now City Hall 



» Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 401. 

2 Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 371. . This word " bouwerie," 
which occurs so frequently in early Dutch documents, is an interesting one. 
The verb in Dutch is "bouwen," to build ; to till, plough. " Bouwerie" is 
used to designate in most cases, not only the portion of the land which is 
tilled or ploughed, but also that portion on which the farm buildings stand. 
In other words, it means usually the "home-lot," which, in the village 
communities on the Hudson, as in those on the Ehine, and in other parts 
of Europe (Laveleye, Prim. Prop., p. 112), was in early times the only holding 
that was strictly in severalty. 

^ See p. 20, supra. 

^Here, as often, "plantation" and "Bouwery" are used as opposite 
terms. Dr. O'Callaghan, Hist, of New ISetherland, II., p. 291, Note, says of 
this use : " By bouweries are meant those farms on which the family resided ; 
by plantations those which were partly cultivated, but on which no settlers 
dwelt." 

*Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIV., p. 110. 



On the Hudson River. 25 

Park in New York, bounded by Broadway, Nassau, Ann and 
Chambers streets, was, as late as 1G86, perhaps much later, 
known as the Village Commons, where the droves of cattle 
were sent morning and evening to pasture. ^ 

These village rights of common in regard to land were 
accompanied, in New Amsterdam, by rights of common parti- 
cipation in the deliberative assembly of the people, as they were 
in the forests of Germany centuries before. The record runs : 
"Tuesday Novbr. 11. 1653. Present at the meeting in the 
City Hall of New Amsterdam," two Burgomasters and three 
Schepens named. Then follows the statement that " some of 
the most influential burghers and inhabitants of this city 
having been lawfully summoned the following appeared," 
naming twenty-three. "To whom the said Hon". Burgomas- 
ters and Schepens propose that, whereas they have asked the 
community to provide means for paying the public expenses 
and keeping in repair the works . . . the aforesaid Magis- 
trates ask the Community whether they will submit to such 
ordinances and taxes, as the Magistrates may consider proper 
and necessary for the government of this city. They all 
answered ' Yes ! ' and promised to obey the Hon'^^ Magistrates 
in every thing as good inhabitants are in duty bound to do 
confirming it with their signatures." - One needs no great 
power of the imagination to fancy that he hears, in the unani- 
mously spoken " Yes " of the Dutch assembly, something very 
like the shaking of spears and clashing of shields^ with which 
the sturdy, warlike Teutons signified assent to the plans of 
their chieftains in the open-air meetings of the tribe ! 

The voice of the colonial settlers had found tolerably free 
expression in local affairs, in some of the village communities* 
on Long Island, earlier than the organization of municipal 



1 Valentine, History of New York City, p. 281. 

2 Docs. Eelating to the Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIV., p. 220. 

3 Green's Hist, of the English People, I., p. 15. 

* " Gravesande " (1645); Breuckelen (1G4G) ; Amersfoort (1G47). 



26 Dutch Village Communities 

government in New Amsterdam. The majority of the set- 
tlers in the neighboring hamlets were Dutch ; some, however, 
were English, who had come from New England to enjoy 
religious freedom among the Dutch colonists. They took 
their lands by Dutch title, and willingly placed themselves 
under Dutch laws and modes of government.^ Director 
Kieft's patent^ to the town of Gravesend, in the year 1645, 
when a few settlers had moved there from New England, is a 
veritable Dutch charter of civil and religious freedom. The 
patentees, it reads, were "to have and enjoye the free libertie 
of conscience according to the costome and manner of Hol- 
land, without molestation or disturbance from any Madgis- 
trate or Madgistrates or any other ecclesiasticall Minister that 
may p'tend iurisdiction over them, with libertie likewise for 
them the s** patentees theyr associates hey res &c. to erect a 
bodye politique and ciuill combination amongst themselves, as 
free men of this Province & of the Towne of Gravesend & to 
make such ciuill ordinances as the Maior part of y" Inhabi- 
tants ifree of the Towne shall think fitting for theyr quiett 
aad peaceable subsisting & to nominate elect & choose 
three of y^ ablest approved honest men & them to present 
annuallie to y^ Gouernor Generall of this Province for the 
tyme being, for him y* said Gouern'' to establish and con- 
firnie ; " which three men were to act as a local court with the 
usual jurisdiction. Five years after this patent was granted, 
the record of " severall orders agreed vppon by and with con- 
sent and approbation of the inhabitants of Gravesend," shows 
that " the first inhabitants agree togeather att Amesfort that 
they would fence in a certaine quantitie of Land to Conteine 
eight and twenty shares, the s** land to be fenced with post and 
raile in one Common fence and to have it compleated by a 
certaine daye by them agreed vppon ; vppon the penaltie of for- 
feiting as much as the rest of the s'^ fence might come vnto : 



' Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 181. 

* Doc. Hist, of N. y., I., p. 411, (See Gravesend Records). 



On the Hudson River. 27 

The said eight and twenty shares were devided by lott ; 
and every one injoyned to build and inhabit in tlie townie by 
a daye agreed vppon for the mutual strengthening of one 
another, for the peace with the Indians being new, and rawe 
there was still feares of theyre vprising to warre. ... It 
was likewise agreed & ordered that none of the inhabitants 
should sell theyre lotts to any whatsoeuer, but first to pro- 
pound it to the towne in generall^ & in case the towne 
would not buye then hee to have libertie to sell to any, 
vnlesse hee w^ere notoriouslie detected for an infamous person 
or a disturber of the common peace ... It was therefore 
ordered that the men should at several times as they thought 
fitting view all the fences and when they found defects to 
giue warning to the neighbors to make upp theyre fences 
according to order." ^ 

The extent to which the principles of holding property in 
common prevailed among the Dutch settlers in the vicinity of 
New Amsterdam, with reference to personal property as well 
as to land, is evidenced by a deed^ for land and cattle on Long 
Island in 1651, granting, " all wdiatsoever the vendor has 
thereon and is belonging to him together with thirty-five and 
one half (sic) goats ; " but the deed adds : " which the purchaser 
now takes at his risk and hazard ," — a saving clause perhaps 
to avoid trouble in the division of the odd goat ! 

A document dated August 27, 1657,* indicates the custom 
of furnishing to a town a certain quantity of meadow land, 
presumably beyond the town proper. It states that Petrus 
Stuyvesant on petition showing the need of the inhabitants of 
" the new begun Q^own of Utrecht and of those who might 



' This was certainly a serious encumbrance upon individual rights in land. 
The same restriction is found in the Germanic Mark, where " no one could 
sell his property to a stranger without the consent of his associates, who 
always had a right of preemption."— Laveleye, Prim. Prop., p. 118. 

2 Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIV., pp. 128-9. 

3 Docs. Eclating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIV, p. 143. 
*Doc. History of N. Y., I., p. 416. 



28 Dutch Village Communities 

hereafter dwell there, allowed unto them as to others a parcel 
of meadow land lying on Long Island by the easterly Hook 
of the Bay of the North River, over against Conyen Island." 
Two years afterward, it is recorded that twenty-four inhabi- 
tants having plantations drew lots by numbers for the 
meadows which had been divided into twenty-four parcels. 
Two plantations, whose owners were named, might draw two 
lots each.^ This distinction between meadow or pasture land 
and the tilled land, is observed also in the documents relating 
to the proposed establishment in 1658 of "a new village at the 
north-eastern extremity of Manhattan Island, ' for the pro- 
motion of agriculture, and as a place of amusement for the 
citizens of New Amsterdam.' To encourage this settlement 
to which the name of ' New Haerlem ' was given, each inhabi- 
tant was to receive from eighteen to twenty-four morgens of 
tillage, and from six to eight morgens of pasture land . . . 
The magistrates were to be nominated at first by the settlers, 
. . ."^ Another illustration of the marked separation of 
lands that were to be devoted to different uses, is found in the 
provision for a " Towneshipp " on Staten Island : "A Towue, 
the which shall bee divided into lotts according to the number 
of Inhabitants proposed . . . That each home lott shall 
have . . . acres of Ground to build a house upon and for 
gardens or other necessary accomodacons. . . . That there 
shall bee allotted of Ploughland or Arable ground . . . acres 
and of Meadow a convenient proporcon." Liberty of con- 
science, and the selection of their own minister, was granted. 
The latter was to have a " lott of ground proporconable with 
the Rest," to be held for succeeding ministers.^ 



1 Doc. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 416. 

^O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., p. 428.— (Citing Alb. Kec. 
VII , pp. 420-22 ; XXIV., pp. 368-9). 

=*Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIII., p. 425. 

Bearing upon this division of tlie land in the early settlements about Xew 
Amsterdam, a passage may here be cited not merely as a study in land 
tenure, but also as a study in English. It relates to tlie present town of 



On the Hudson River. 29 

In the cluster of Dutch village communities at the mouth 
of the Hudson, many of the peculiar customs of Holland also 
prevailed, which were not specially connected with ^land- 
holding. An order with regard to "waggon racing," pro- 
vides that " No person shall race with carts and wagons, in 
the streets within the villages, but the driver while passing 
through villages must walk by the side of his horse or 
vehicfe,^ according to the edict of the 12th of July, 1657." 
An edict of "the 15th Dec^ 1657," relating to inn-keepers, 
is what might be called an early Civil Damage act: "All 
tavern keepers to be held liable for willingly permittmg 
fighting or wounding in their houses, and when such breaches 
of the ''peace take place, they shall inform the officer of the 
same, on the penalty of having their trade stopped." ' 



Jamaica, which then had the no doubt appropriate Dutch name of " Eustdorp 
(quiet-village), and it purports to be "a true coppy taken out of r town- 
booke by Daniel Denton, Clark, y^ 29th off August, 1G61." It goes on to 
say: "It is farther voted & agreed upon by the town y* as ye medows are 
devided by lot above specified so they shall continue ffor perpetuity without 
any flurther devision till y^ bee Layed out in particular & y» every man 
to take his share in y^ neck where the now, & as y^ town do enlarge 
w'h inhabitants y« shall bee devided proportionably to every neck till y^ bee 
lavd out." Docs. Kelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIV., p. 506. 

'» The writer has somewhere seen it stated that this custom of walking by 
the side of horse or vehicle is still observed in some villages of the more 
northern provinces of Holland. 
^Doc. Hist, of N. Y., L, p. 424. 

It mif'ht be considered an unpardonable omission, for one who was refer- 
ring to the peculiar customs of early New York, not to mention some of the 
causes which were considered directly responsible for bringing on a certain 
'• warr with the Indians." Among the reasons given, are these : " For men 
wearing long hair and perriwigs made of women's hair. 

" For women wearing borders of hair and for cutting curling and laying 
out their hair and disguising themselves by following strange fashions in 
their apparel. 

"For prophaneness in the people in not frequenting their meetings, and 
others going away before the blessing is pronounced." 

Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., III., p. 243. (Date [probably 
1614-92], and authenticity not vouched for). 



30 Dutch Village Communities 

A hundred miles north of New Amsterdam, the first 
Dutch adventurers had erected, in 1614, on the Avestern bank 
of the Hudson river, a small block house called the " Ron- 
duit." ^ The land about it remained unsettled till the year 
1652 or 3, when a few persons who had been members of the 
colony of Rensselaerswyck, desiring to escape the feudal 
restrictions of the manor, settled upon the Indian tract called 
Atkarkarton, in the region known as the Esopus.^ In 1661, 
this Dutch settlement had grown to an extent which induced 
the inhabitants to desire separation from Fort Orange, of 
which it had hitherto been an appendage, so as to obtain a 
local court of justice and a settled ministry. 

Stuy vesant " accordingly conferred a charter on the Esopus, 
to which place, in commemoration of the fact that the soil was a 
free gift from the Indians, he gave the name of ' Wiltwyck.' " ^ 
The charter granted to this village indicates very well the 
scope of the powers possessed by incorporated towns in New 
Netherland at that time. It provided that "the aforesaid 
Director-General and Council, considering the increased popu- 
lation of said village, resolve to favor its inhabitants with a 
subaltern court of justice, and to organize it as far as possible, 
and the situation of the country will permit, in conformity 
with the customs of the city of Amsterdam in Holland, but 
so, that from all judgments an appeal may be made to the 
Director-General and Council in New Netherland, who shall 
reserve the power to give their final decision ; " that the court 
of justice "sliall consist of a sheriff,* being m loco, Mdio shall 

' It is now Eondout, recently incorporated with the city of Kingston. It 
was the Dutcli word meaning a " small fort." In Docs. Relating to Col. 
Hist, of X. Y., XIII., p. 149, it is called "Eedout;" at p. 257, it is called 
" Kedoubt." 

^O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., pp. 356-7; also Brodhead's 
Hist, of N. Y., p. 536. Esopus creek still retains the name then applied also 
to the region through Avhich it ran. 

^O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., p. 432. (Citing Alb. Ecc. 
XIX., pp. 36, 112, 114, 137-140). 

"• EoeloffSwartwout was soon after appointed the first sheriff at Wiltwyck. 
Among his instructions is the following : " He shall take rank of the Burgo- 



On the Hudson River. 31 

summon in the name of the Dh-ector-General and Council, the 
appointed schepens, and preside at their meeting ; and with 
him three schepens, who for the present time and ensuing 
year, . . . are elected by the Director-general and Council 
aforesaid." This court was to give final judgment in civil 
suits involving fifty guilders, or less, in amount ; in other 
cases an appeal lay to the Director-General and Council. In 
criminal cases the local court had power to arrest, imprison, 
and transfer the delinquent to the Director-General, but not 
to act further except in regard to the lesser crimes, and in all 
such cases an appeal lay to the supreme authority. One 
clause of the charter reads: "All inhabitant^ of the Esopus 
are, till further orders, either from the Lords Patroons, or 
their higher magistrates, subjected and may be summoned 
before the aforesaid Sheriif and Commissaries, who shall hold 
their court, in the village aforesaid, every fortnight — harvest 
time excepted — unless necessity or occasion might otherwise 
require." ^ Subject to certain requirements of approval from 
the Director-General and Council, they might act in regard 
to public roads, the enclosure of lands, the building of 
churches and schools, etc. In conclusion the charter provides 
that " whereas, it is customary in our Fatherland and other 
well regulated governments, that annually some change takes 
place in the magistracy, so that some new ones are appointed, 
and some are continued to inform the newly appointed, so 
shall the Schepens, now confirmed, pay due attention to the 
conversation, conduct and abilities of honest and decent per- 
sons, inhabitants of their respective villages, to inform the 
Director-General and Council, about the time of the next 
election, as to who might be sufficiently qualified to be then 
elected by the Director-General and Council." 



masters and Schepens and sit in their meeting, also to exhort the culprits, 
sentenced by the Court, before sentence is passed on behalf of the magis- 
trates." Docs. Kelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIII., p. 158. 
' O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., pp. 436-7. 



32 Dutch Village Communities 

Even before the incorporation of this village, there were 
evidences in the grants of land at Esopus of the distinction 
between the bouweries, or " home lots," ^ meadow land, and 
wood land. In a patent dated September, 1656, by Stuyve- 
sant and his council to one Cristoifel Davids, he was granted 
thirty -six morgens of land, " with as much hayland (meadow) 
as shall 'pro rata be allowed to the other bouweries." ^ About 
the same time there was a patent to Johanna de Laet, of land 
"containing altogether in arable lands, meadows and wood 
land five hundred morgens." ^ After the establishment of the 
local court of justice, one of the first cases which came before 
the three schepens, shows very well the existence of the custom 
of common pasturage. One Blanshan complained that the 
herdsman did not " bring his cows home in time, that he had 
not brought them in two days." The herdsman answered : 
" If they don't bring their cattle by the drove I can't care for 
them." This was the view of the court. ^ 

Only two years after Wiltwyck received its charter, came 
the massacre by the Indians, June 7, 1663. The savages, 
entering the palisaded village just before noon while the far- 
mers were in the fields, killed many of the defenceless women 
and children, took some forty-five others into captivity, and 
burned a part of the town. Seventy inhabitants were missing 
when the Indians were finally routed by the assembled vil- 
lao-ers. This seemed to be the beginning of the misfortunes 
which immediately preceded the surrender of the Dutch to the 
English in September of the following year. The situation 
became alarming ; " an expensive war was being waged against 
the Indians ; the Company's territory was invaded by Con- 
necticut ; the English villages were in a state of revolt, and 
the public treasury was exhausted." ^ In this extremity, the 



' See page 24, supra. 

2 Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIII., pp. 69-70. 

3 Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIII., pp. 71-72. 
■* Researches of the late Jonathan W. Hasbrouck. 

6 O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, II., p. 490. 



On the Hudson River. 33 

l)urgomasters and scliepens at New Amsterdam requested the 
Director and Council to call a meeting of delegates from the 
several towns, " to take into consideration the state of the 
province." "It was at this gloomy juncture," says Dr. 
O'Callaghan, " when it became evident that the country was 
held only on sufferance, and authority felt itself utterly pow- 
erless that the principle of popular Representation was, 
for the first time, fully recognized in this province." ^ Two 
deputies were elected by plurality votes of the inhabitants at 
New Amsterdam, Rensselaerswyck, Fort Orange, Wiltwyck, 
New Haerlem, Staten Island, Breukelen, Midwout, Amers- 
foort. New Utrecht, Boswyck, and Bergen. 

Even such a popular assembly as this, was not able to resist 
the tide of events which, in September of 1664, swept New 
Netherlaud from the hands of the Dutch and placed it under 
English rule. The Dutch colonists themselves did not seem 
averse to a change in government. They were doubtless 
wearied by their long struggle for the popular rights enjoyed 
in their Fatherland, and hoped that they might gain addi- 
tional freedom under England's rule. In that, they were 
doomed to disappointment ; it took nearly twenty years under 
English supremacy for them to reach the same point — the 
election of a populai* general representative assembly^ — which 
they had just gained from the Dutch government before its 
surrender to Colonel Nicolls. 

The Dutch of New Amsterdam vigorously contended, at this 
time, for their rights, and thus the articles of capitulation, 
which Nicolls consented to in the "Governor's Bowery,"^ con- 
tained many liberal clauses. They provided, among other 



■ O'Callaghan, Hist, of New Netherland, 11., p. 505. 

* This was the general assembly of 1683, which divided the Hudson river 
valley into counties (see Docs. Eelating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIII., p. 
575), and was the beginning of regular representative government for the 
whole province of New York. 

* What is now the Bowery in New York City was doubtless originally so 
called from Gov. StUyvesant's "home-lot" and its buildings. 

3 



34 Dutch Village Communities 

things, that " all people shall continue free denizens, and shall 
enjoy their, lands, houses, goods, shipps, wheresoever they are 
within this country, and dispose of them as they please ; " 
that they " shall enjoy their own customs concerning their 
inheritances," and " the liberty of their consciences in Divine 
Worship and church discipline." ^ As a whole, the immediate 
changes which the surrender wrought in the government were 
nominal rather than substantive. It had been agreed that in 
the inferior offices there should be no changes until the next 
regular election, and although New Amsterdam became New 
York, the same city government of schout, burgomasters, and 
schepens went on for nearly a year. On the 12th of June, 
1665, there was published what the record^ calls : " The Gov- 
erno" Revocation of y® iForme of Government of New Yorke 
under y'' style of Burgomasf & Schepens " It declares : 
" That by a particular commission such persons shall be 
authorized to putt the Lawes in execucon in whose abilityes 
prudence & good affection to his Ma"^' service and y* Peace 
and happinesse of this Governm* I have especial reason to put 
confidence, which persons so constituted and appointed shall 
be knowne and called by the Name & Style of INIayor or 
Aldermen and Sheriffe, according to the custome of England 
in other his Ma"^' Corporacons." Eight years later (1673) 
Benckes and Evertsen's charter^ reinstated the Dutch govern- 
ment for six months before the English again took possession 
of the territory. 

The Duke of York's Laws* published and given to Colonel 
Nicolls, the Deputy Governor, in 1664, but not introduced 
till Sept. 22, 1676, recognize, with some changes of phrase- 



' Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., II., pp. 250, 251. 

"^ Doc. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 389. 

^ For many of the papers of this period see Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of 
N. Y., II., pp. 571-731. 

* These laws may be conveniently referred to, as published under direc- 
tion of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1879, with 
interesting historical matter relating to that State. 



On the Hudson River. 35 

ology, the existence of many of the village customs which 
prevailed in the earlier Dutch settlements. Constables were 
to be chosen yearly, " by the plurality of the votes of the 
freeholders in each town." The " overseers shall be eight in 
Number, men of good fame and life, Chosen by the plurality 
of voyces of the freeholders in each Town." Thus the voters 
of the villages were, as before, the freeholders ; the suffrage 
continued to be based upon land. Similar methods of holding 
the land in common still obtained, and were recognized in the 
Duke's Laws. " Every person interested in the improvement 
of Common fields inclosed for Corn or other Necessary use 
shall from time to time, make and keep his part of the fence 
Sufficiently Strong and in constant repair, to secure the Corn 
and other fruits therein, and shall not put, cause, or permit 
any Cattle to be put in so long as any Corn or other fruits 
shall be growing or remain upon any part of the Land so 
Enclosed." Fence-view^ers, such as had earlier been appointed 
in New Amsterdam and other Dutch towns, were also provided 
for in the English laws just quoted, " for all or each Common 
field belonging to the Town where they dwell ; to view the 
Common fences within their trust." Further, " all cattle 
and hoggs shall be markt with the publique mark of the Town 
to which they belong and the private mark of the owner, 
and whatsoever Swine or greater Cattle, horses excepted 
shall be found in the woods or Commons unmarked are Lya- 
ble to poundage." ^ The character of the courts proposed by 



' It is interesting to note that in the Duke's Laws, the rules laid down for 
the building of line fences show a marked distinction between the " home- 
lots" and all other land. Between the "home-lots," the line fence must be 
made and maintained by both owners, even if only one wished to " improve" 
by fencing. Of other lands, only such as " improved" the land paid for the 
fencing. He " shall Compell no man to make any fence with him except 
he also Improve in Several." 

''The village pound is so old an institution ("older than the King's 
Bench," says Sir Henry Maine, in Early History of Institutions, p. 263), 
that the survival is a matter of special interest. Dr. II. B. Adams has 
called attention to its early existence at Hatfield, and has noted its deriva- 



36 Dutch Village Communities 

these laws was similar to that of the earlier Dutch tribunals. 
The Court of Sessions^ held within the "Riding," by the 
constable and justices of the peace, took the place essentially 
of that of the schout and schepens under the Dutch. The 
Court of Assizes, held once a year at New York, was a higher 
Court, and the local Town Courts were lower than the Court 
of Sessions, and were constituted by the constable with at 
least five overseers sitting in judgment upon matters belong- 
ing peculiarly to the town. 

Governor Nicolls five years after the first English posses- 
sion, in answer "to the Severall Queries Relating to the 
Planters in the Territories of his R. H. S. the Duke of Yorke 
in America," " reports : " 1st. The Governour and Council 
with the High Sheriffe and the Justices of the Peace in the 
Court of the Generall assizes have the Supreme Power of 
making altering and abolishing any Laws in this Govern- 
ment . . . 2nd. The Land is naturally apt to produce Corne 
& Cattle so that the severall proportions or dividents of 
Land are alwaies allowed with respect to the numbers of the 
Planters, what they are able to manage and in w* time to accom- 
plish their undertaking, the feed of Cattell is free in Com- 
monage to all Townships. The Lots of Meadow or Corne 

tion from the Saxon pytidan, to pen or enclose. — (Studies, First Series. New 
England Towns, p. 32). In the record of the transactions in the town of 
Wiltwyck, 1667, may be found the following instructions for the " pound- 
master (or Encloser)." " No horses or Cattle must run on the lands before 
the first of September. And if anything but working <horses and calves are 
found on any ones land, or his neighbors, lie shall bring it to the pound 
yard and the owner must pay full pound money," etc. 

1 At Wiltwyck, " a Court of Sessions convened April 26, (probably in 
1675), composed of Captain Chambers, justice of the peace, George Hall, 
sheriff, Cornelius B. Slecht, \V. Nottingham, Jan Eltinge and Jan Brigs." 
— (History of J. W. Hasbrouck, p. 176). At the same time "a record was 
. . . made of a jury, viz : William Ashfordby, Wessel Ten Broeck, Lowies 
Duboys, Mattys Mattysen, Jacob Adriaense, D. J. Sehmoes, Jacobus Elmen- 
dorf." Mr. Hasbrouck considers this to be probably the first jury in 
America. Assault and battery the chief offence. 

" Doc. Hist, of N. Y., I., p. 59. 



On the Hudson River. 37 

Ground are peculiar to each Planter." Yet it should be noted 
that these " Lots of Meadow or Corne Ground," which are 
spoken of as " peculiar to each Planter," were probably not 
separately fenced as individual holdings until some years 
afterward. At the Esopus, and probably elsewhere along 
the river, it was the custom of the villagers to enclose many lots 
or farms outside of the stockade, in one enclosure ; each owner 
of the land enclosed, building in proportion to his valuation, 
a part of what was called the " Ring-fence," ^ Mdiich it was the 
fence-viewer's duty to look after. In the Kingston Rec- 
ords, ^ at the county clerk's office, a grant dated August 25, 
1701, conveys land '* running . . . about south west unto 
the Ring-fence, and from the said Ring-fence north west 
in the woods." In 1676 an order to the magistrates of 
Esopus, speaks of the '' inconvenience, prejudice and great 
charge to all the Inhabitants of these parts, to maintaine an 
Extraordinary ffence many Miles Long," ^ and bids the farmers 
to move their houses within the town. Just when these 
extensive common fences, enclosing many holdings of the 
arable land, disappeared, is doubtful.* It was probably by a 



• Researches of the late J. W. Hasbrouck. 

« Liber AA. of Deeds, p. 265. 

3 Docs. Relating to Col. Hist, of N. Y., XIII., p. 495. 

■• The circular, or ring-fence, was the object of special enactment in the 
early laws of New York. " An Act for regulating the Fences in the County 
of Ulster. Passed the 18th of October, 1701," recites that " whereas in the 
County of Ulster, tlie Inhabitants there are accustomed to make circular 
Fences, for the surrounding of their Land which they manure, by which 
Means great Quantities of Lands, are surrounded with the said circular 
Fence; and those who are in the Middle of the said Lands, have their 
Fields secured by the said Fence, yet have not contributed, nor will con- 
tribute their Projjortion of the charge of the said Fences : That the same 
may be remedied for the future ; I. Be it Enacted by his Honour the Lieu- 
tenant Governor, and Council, and Representatives, convened in General Assem- 
bly, and by the Authority of the same. That as to all Lands within the said 
County of Ulster, which now are, or hereafter shall be surrounded with a 
Circular Fence, the Owners or Possessors thereof shall, in proportion to the 
Quantities of Land tlicy have within the said Fence, pay and contribute to 



38 Dutch Village Communities 

gradual change ; but it is certain that the rights of common 
in pasture and woodland prevailed in the Hudson river towns 
a long time after the cultivated lands had become separately 
enclosed by the individual holders. At Kingston in 1792, — 
a hundred years later than the period we have been exam- 
ining, in a lease now in the archives of the Ulster Historical 
Society, — Johannes J. Jansen describes one of his lots of 
" orchard and meadow land," as " lying west and adjoining 
the Lands of Jacob Ten Brouck and the Plains or Common." 
" House-lot " and " Armebouwery " are terms still in use at 
that date, and even in the present century. ^ 

Commonage of pasture and woodlantl appears in communi- 
ties established much later than those we have hitherto been 
examining. The records in the County Clerk's office at 
Goshen, although they do not begin until about 1700, show 
that rights of common existed in Orange County for the next 
hundred years at least. In 1686 Gov. Dongan gave a patent 
to sixteen Dutch patentees to make what was to be called the 
town of Orange, to be held of King James II., "in flfree & 
Common Soccage according to the tenure of East Green w'ich in 
the county of Kent." ^ The record contains grants of lots in 
this patent, with certain " privileges in the common or undi- 
vided land." ^ The Waywayanda and Tappan patents com- 
prised large tracts of land granted to similar numbers of 



the making of the said Fence ; " then follows the confei-ring, upon any 
Justice of the Peace in the county, of power, in case of non-payment, to assess 
the proportion and direct the constable to levy on goods to the amount. A 
similar act with regard to these circular fences passed in 1750. This act of 
1750 speaks of "lands or Meadows, which they Use in Common among 
them, in Tillage, Pasturage or Mowing," and the act of 1701 treats of the 
fences surrounding " Land which they manure." These designations show 
that most of the holdings of the arable land were not separated by fences. 

'See list of lots, as late as 1814, in the archives of the Ulster Plistorical 
Society. "Armebouwery" probably meant an inferior home-lot, or poor 
piece of tillable land. 

* Orange County Records, Lib. B., p. 90. 

^Orange County Records, Lib. B., p. 97. 



On the Hudson River. 39 

proprietors and held largely in common. In "a release ot 
survivorship by Joynt Tenantcy made between the Patentees 
of Waywayanda and entered at the request of said Patentees 
the 23rd day of September . . . 1706," each releases for 
himself, his heirs and assigns : " all their right of survivor- 
ship by Joynt Tennancy of in and to said full equall and 
undivided twelfth part of the before recited tracts of land." ^ 
Nearly ninety years later (Sept. 10, 1793), is recorded a grant 
"of four equal undivided thirty six parts of the said Lot 
piece or parcel of Land," ^ of the Waywayanda patent. In 
a grant of 1720 was conveyed "all that certain Tract of 
Land situated in the Town Spott of Goshen in Orange County 
within the Colony of New York aforesaide containing eighty 
acres and known by number foore being one of the Home 
Lots."^ In 1713 is recorded a grant of a lot of land "jSTo. 
Two in the divided lands of Tapan . . . Together with an 
equall or proportionable right in the undivided land or com- 
mons of Tapan or Orange Towne agreeable and proportion- 
able to what others shall have for the like quantitie of 
Morgc::s or acres,"* — which gives unmistakable evidence of the 
existence of the proportional rights of the villager in the 
general domain, known in England as "Common appendant," 
and found to exist in those village communities of the conti- 
nent of Europe, ^ whence England's land customs came. 

Not until near the beginning of the present century (1793), 
was any considerable portion of these common tracts divided 



' Orange County Records, Lib. B., p. 3. 

*Orange County Records, Lib. E., p. 277. 
. ^ Orange County Records, Lib. B. p. 277. 

■* Orange County Records, Lib. B., p. 81. 

*" During the middle ages," says Laveleye, "the right to a sliare in the 
collective domain gradually ceased to be a personal right, and became a 
real right, a mere dependence on habitation. Only the owner of an entire 
farmstead {Hube, Hoffstatt) had a whole share in the mark ; . . . The right 
of enjoyment in the tields, wood, meadow and water, was sold as an append- 
age of the Auie." Laveleye, Prim. Prop., pp. 12U-121. 



40 Dutch Village Communities 

by partition and allotment to individual propriet(5rs, and it 
was then done pursuant to acts of the Legislature of the 
state. 

In Dutchess County, which was settled a few years later 
than Orange County, similar customs of land-holding pre- 
vailed for about the same length of time. The first deed 
recorded in the Dutchess County Clerk's office at Pough- 
keepsie^ is one dated Dec. 20, 1718, in which J. Jacobus Van 
den Bogert granted to Capt. Barent Van Kleeck and others 
a lot '' For the proper and onley use" benefitt and behoof of 
the Inhabitance and Naborhod of pochkepsen aforesaid to 
Bild and Maentaen a proper Mietenghous to worship the one 
and onely . . . God according to the Ruels and Methodes as 
it is agried and Concluded by the Sinod National kept at 
Dordreght in the year 1618 and 1619 and that in the Neder 
Dutch Lingo and manner as it is now used by the Clarsses 
and Church of amsterdam with the benefitt of the Mieten- 
hous yard for a Bureall place of Cristian Corps to the same 
belonging." The community which thus, within fifteen 
years after the first settlement, made such a permanent church 
establishment, held their meadow and woodland, though 
probably not their cultivated land, in common. The record 
shows a grant, in 1707, by "Myndert harmse of pogkeepsink, 



^ The first mention of Poughkeepsie which I have found in the records 
occurs in a quit-claim deed given by an Indian, reciting: "This fifth day 
of May 1683 appeared before me, Adrian Van lipendam, Notary Public in 
New Albany and the undersigned witnesses a Highland Indian called 3Iassany, 
who declares herewith that he has given as a free gift a bouwery to Pieter 
Lansingh and bouwery to Jan Smeedes a young glazier also a waterfall near 
the bank of the river to build a mill thereon. The waterfall is called 
Pooghkepesingh and the land Minnissingh situate on the Eastside of the 
river," etc. The witnesses were Cornelis van Dyk and Direk Wesselsen. 
This was undoubtedly the fall from which afterwards the Dutch gave the 
name "Fall-kill" to the stream emptying into the Hudson at Pough- 
keepsie. A dye wood mill has for many years occupied the original site of 
the mill of Jan Smeedes above mentioned. — Docs, Relating to Col. Hist, of 
N. Y., XIII., p. 571. 



On the <^TJudson River. 41 

... to Jan Osteroni of Pogkeepsink " of a parcel of land 
" with y^ previledge of cutting of timber and wood and IMow- 
ino- of grasse for hay in y^ MeadoAVS and pastering of Cattle 
& horses in y" woods of that part of y' Land which now 
belongeth to y*" heirs of y' aforesaid Robert Sanders." ^ This 
Robert Sanders here mentioned seems to have been the origi- 
nal patentee of a considerable tract of land from which grants 
were made, always with the " common appendant " rights in 
the unenclosed meadow and woodland. No town records of 
this time remain to indicate the particular customs of pastur- 
age about Poughkeepsie, but it is likely that in Dutchess, 
as in Orange and Ulster Counties, the cattle were sent in droves 
to the common pasture lands, each individual in the commu- 
nity designating his stock by a special brand or ear-mark.^ 

The first court house in Poughkeepsie was constructed of 
wood furnished chiefly from ''the commons." November 13, 
1747, Jacobus Van den Bogert of Poughkeepsie precinct 
gave to four justices of the peace a deed of lands for " Court 
House & Goals," in which the grantor "for himself and 
his heirs and assigns doth hereby Grant a privilege in his 
Unimproved Lands or Commons for Cutting and Carrying 
away all manner of wood and timber for Compleating and 
Repairing the said Court House and Goals on the hereby 
granted premises."^ That the rights of commonage were 
enjoyed generally by the neighborhood, appears in numerous 
grants similar to the following : " Myndert harmse of pog- 
dnk in Dutchess County . . . doe bargaine . . . unto the 



' Dutchess County Kecords, Lib. A or 1, p. 7. 

2 The Kegister in the Orange County Clerk's office at Goshen, at page 32, 
contains the following minute: "... 1704 The fourth Sessions. Ordered 
That all the Inhabitants of this county doe the next Sessions Bring into the 
Clark their markes of their Chatles &c, In order that they may be allowed 
by the Court and entered by the said Clark in the publick Records. This 
order publisht upon the County house door." The distinctive marks are 
enumerated. Among others is found that of " Cornelius Herring for Horses 
C H upon the nere buttock his neat Cattle sheep hogs &c. A hole in right 
Eare and A Swallows Tale in tlie Left Eare." 

' Dutchess County Records, Map 6. 



42 Dutch Village Communities 

said pieter u : ziele all that Certaine tract or parcell of Land 
scitiiate " and so on, " together w*!" the privilege of cutting grass 
for hay in y** Meadows as others of y^ neighbours and ffree 
outdrift ffor horses and Cattle in y' woods.^ This deed bears 
date, 1722/3, and reserves a yearly rent of " halfe a bnsshel 
of good winter wheat." In 1730, one Thomas Rathbone of 
Rhode Island granted to one John Gay and wife " and their 
heirs and assigns for ever one seventh part of all my Right 
or share of Land (both divided and undivided) in the Town 
of Pecapesy^ in Dutchess County . . . together M'ith the 
profits Priviledges and appurtenances unto the same belong- 
ing or in any wise appertaining."^ 

Less than one hundred years ago (Oct. 11, 1786), an affida- 
vit was made by "johannis Swartwout and Samuel Curry, . . . 
that they are two of the owners and Proprietors of that 
certain tract undivided and parcel of Lands Tenements & her- 
iditaments held in Common, situate ... in the Precinct of 
Poughkeepsie . . . commonly called and known by the name of 
the Commons, and that they have given thirty days previous 
notice to the other owners and proprietors of the aforesaid 
tract of Lands ... of their intention of applying to this 
Court [Common Pleas] for the appointment of Commissioners 
for the division of the same in pursuance of the act of the 
Legislature of the State of New York passed sixteenth of 
March, 1785 entitled 'an Act for the Partition of lands.'"'' 
By means of such partition of the common lands, individual 
ownership of all property became universal in Dutchess, as it 
did in Orange County, just at the close of the last century. 

There remain to be considered^ two village communities, 
in some respects more marked in character, and more interest- 



' Dutchess County Records, Lib. A. of Deeds, pp. 31-32. 

* Poughkeepsie is said to have been spelled in more than forty different 
ways. 

^ Dutchess County Records, Lib. A. of Deeds, p. 103. 
■• Dutchess County Records, Map 13 and enclosed Docs. 

* If the limits of this paper permitted, interesting facts of community -life 
might be gathered from other settlements on the Hudson. At Albany the 



On the Hudson River. 43 

ing for purposes of study, than those already examined, 
because they combine with the customs of common land- 
holdino-, a local government and an exclusive family proprie- 
torship peculiar to the earlier types of community-life among 
the Germanic peoples. 

Just west of the town of Kingston, and adjoining it, lies 
the present town of Hurley, including land of which there 
were some grants to Dutch settlers who moved back from 
Wiltwyck as early as 1662. In distinction from the latter, 
and much older, place, the early settlers called it " Niew Dorp " 
(New Village).^ The grants made by the Dutch government 
were confirmed after the English occupation, and in 1669, 
the same year in which Wiltwyck became Kingston, the 
" Niew Dorp " was named Hurley from the paternal estate of 
the English governor, Lovelace. There in Niew Dorp it was, 
that Louis Du Bois, the Walloon,^ who afterwards became 



records have been well preserved, but, so far as the writer has consulted them, 
thej would yield nothing especially significant, aside from the facts already 
noted in other towns. From the earliest settlement until 1652, the inhabi- 
tants of Fort Orange, now Albany, were hampered by the feudal restrictions 
of the manor of Rensselaerswyck ; at that time the separation took place 
and an independent court of justice was established at Fort Orange. 

Interesting material also is afforded by the records relating to the settle- 
ments (one of them on the site of the present city of Newburgh) about the 
year 1710, made by Germans, who were known as the Palatines,— another 
instance of the close relationship between the Rhine and the Hudson, 
besides that afforded by New Paltz, as hereafter mentioned. 

Doc. Hist, of New York, pp. 327-383, contains the papers relating to the 
Palatines, and at p. 347, in a document dated 1719, there is mentioned "A 
certain tract of land on the West side of Hudson's river above the high 
lands in the County of Vlster neer to a place called Quassaick containing 
two thousand one hundred and ninety acres laid out into nine lotts for the 
said Palatins and a glebe of five hundred acres for a Lutheran minister and 
his successors forever." 

1 Researches of J. W. Hasbrouck, referred to in Docs. Relating to Col. 
Hist, of N. Y., Xin, p. 412. 

'^The Walloons," says Dr. Baird (Huguenot Emigration to America, I., 
p. 149), " were the inhabitants of the region now comprised by the French 
department du Nord, and the south western provinces of Belgium. They 



44 Dutch J^Uage Communities 

the leader of the pioneer band that settled at New Paltz, had 
established himself, and from there the Indians took many 
captives in their retreat irom the massacre at Wiltwyck in 
1663, already mentioned. The Hurley (spelled Horly, hiirly, 
and in several other ways) Commons is a term found in most 
of the early deeds of land in that vicinity, and the history of 
the grant from which it arose is interesting. 

In the Ulster County Records^ at Kingston is an indenture 
bearing date the 25th of August, 1709, signed by nine pro- 
prietors, eight of them Dutch and one of them a Hugue- 
not, reciting that they had purchased, together with others, a 
" certaine tract of land near y^ town of hiirly afores^," and 
extending south to the New Paltz patent. It refers to a 
patent of October 19, 1708, to "Cornelius Cool" and his 
associates, and goes on to say : that " whereas y"; s*? lands were 
more especially purchased & obtayned by y^ parties in y^ said 
deed & patent mentioned to serve as Commons for wood 
pasturage & drifts of Cattle to y*; parties respectively in 
y*! s^ severall Instruments named . . . This Indenture witt- 
nesseth . . . that upon y^ decease of one or more of y^ si par- 
ties y^ lands . . . shall not be subject to any survivorship but 
shall descend unto y^ heirs of y! partie or parties respectively 



were a people of French extraction and spoke the French language." 
Among the Walloons who came to New Netherland, about 16G0, was this 
Louis DuBois, who played so prominent a part in the civil and religious life 
of the community which he did much to establish. He was born at Wicres 
in Flanders in 1627, went to the Palatinate about 1(347, and was married at 
Mannheim in 1655. The name Wallkill, given to the stream whose rich 
border-lands attracted Louis DuBois, is by some derived from his tradi- 
tionrd title of Louis the " Wall." Whether this be the origin of tlie name, 
or whether it came from the Holland branch of the Rhine called the Waal, 
this tributary of the Hudson serves, at all events, to emphasize that close 
relationship of the two Rhines which is elsewhere noted. 

' Ulster County Records, Lib. AA. of Deeds, p. 494. 

^ This word "drift" in its use here is interesting because derived from 
the German trift, pasturage or drove ; Anglo-Saxon, drif, a driving. • It is a 
legitimate Teutonic representative of an old Teutonic custom. 



On the Hudson River. 45 

as if y\ same had been particularly divided . . . and it is 
further covenanted and agreed by y"; parties aforesaid . . . 
y' no part of y*: s"! lands shall hereafter be divided but in such 
manner as in these pr^'ents is exprest but y' y*! wood lands 
shall for ever remain in common . . . and it is further cove- 
nanted and agreed . . . y* in case it shall hereafter be thought 
reasonable to let sell or dispose of some small tract or tracts 
of arrable Land wf may happen in the sf tract the same shall 
& may bee disposed for y! Common benefit by y! sf parties or 
y\ major part of them who are to execute y^ necessary deeds 
for y*; same, And it is further [agreed] that y^ number of those 
that shall have any right to dispose as afores^ shall bee nine 
or y^ major part of them, and y* how many soever doe claime 
under any one of y": S; purchazers . . . shall be only accounted 
as one & may appoint one of their number to vote for them 
all when any land is to be disposed of. And it is further cove- 
nanted & agreed between y^ sf parties that they . . . [shall 
not] sell or dispose of any of y^ sf wood lands to bee left in 
Common ... to any person or persons not being an Inhabi- 
tant of y! town of horly, arrable Lands Creekes for Mills and 
such like cases excepted and in case y^ sf Commons or any 
part thereof do by Inheritance or by will descend or are 
bequeathed to any . . . not being an Inhabitant of y^ sf toMai 
he or they shall neverthelesse enjoy y"! same but not sell 
y! same to any other ... not being an Inhabitant . . . and 
it is further agreed y' all monys to bee received for any arra- 
ble Lands bee always divided amongst them and their heirs 
and assigns in nine equal shares or proportions." This exclu- 
sion from proprietorship of all who were not inhabitants of 
Hurley finds its prototype in the primitive mark of Germany, 
— notably where its organization has been preserved in the 
forest cantons of Switzerland. There " each inhabitant," says 
Laveleye, " owned his house and the adjacent plot as private 
property : the rest of the territory was collective property." 
Yet the general assembly or Landesgemeinde, " superintended 
the use of the forest and common pasture . . . and framed 



46 Dutch Village Communities 

all necessary regulations. No one could sell lus house or his 
land to a stranger." ^ 

Ten years after the execution of the above agreement which 
sought to do away with survivorship-rights, and to fix forever 
the woodland as common property, an instrument^ dated 
Sept. 3, 1719, under authority of the Governor and Assembly 
of the Colony, and signed by the Secretary, appointed seven 
of the Hurley freeholders as trustees of all the land included 
in the patent of 1708,^ and, by incorporation, made them a 
body politic. * In case of vacancy in the board of trustees by 
death or disability, the freeholders and inhabitants were 
authorized to elect the successor by a majority of voices. 
They were also permitted to meet together in some public 
place annually the first Tuesday in April to elect " one or 
more Constables, Two or more Assessors, two or more Col- 
lectors one or more Supervisors and such and so many other 
town officers " as they should agree upon. To defray the 
expenses of procuring the Act of Confirmation from the 
Assembly the freeholders were to make payment " by volun- 
tary and equal contributions." For the same purpose, how- 
ever, the trustees were prudently given power to sell to the 
highest bidder any of the common lands within the tract, not 
to exceed the amount of £225 in value. The " succession as 
above Directed to be continued forever To and for the benefit 
and behoof of all the ffreeholders and inhabitants of the said 
town." 

Apparently the " Hurley Commons " thus continued to be 
held for the public use by the locally appointed trustees, not, 



' Laveleye, Prim. Prop., pp. 239-240. 

" Town Clerk's Records, West Hurley. 

'The patent mentioned before (p. 44), given to Cornelius Cool and asso- 
ciates, "to their heires and assignes forever," provided they settle and 
improve it Avithin three years ; " In fTree and common soccage as of our 
mannor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent." A rent of twelve 
shillings was reserved. 

■^ Feudal ism was asserted in the nominal yearly rent of one peppercorn, 
which the trustees had to pay to the Crown. 



On the Hudson Biver, 47 

indeed, "forever," but for nearly a century ; — until a division 
was " made in Pursuance of an Act of the Legislature of the 
State of New York entitled an Act for Dividing the Common 
Lands in the Town of Hurley in the County of Ulster 
passed the 4th of April 1806,"^ three commissioners being 
duly appointed for the purpose. In the " Field Book" which 
contains the surveys and a record of the allotments made by 
the commissioners, is recited that portion of the act which 
specifies two classes who were to take part in the allotment, 
and it includes some of the inhabitants who had never had any 
rights, either by descent or purchase, in the original grant. 

It provided,^ "That there shall be set apart and conveyed 
to every Freeholder severally who shall own a Freehold within 
said Corporation of the Value of more than three hundred 
Dollars, and who shall reside therein at the time of passing 
this Act, and own and occupy a Dwelling House therein, one 
certain share or dividend of said Common Land, and where 
two or more persons are possessed of such Freehold as Joint 
tenants or tenants in common [they] shall be entitled to one 
such share and no more ; and to every Freeholder possessing 
a Freehold in said (Corporation of the Value of less than 
three hundred Dollars and shall be a native thereof and shall 
own and occupy a Dwelling House therein at the time of 
passing this Act, a like share or Dividend of said Common 
Land which several Description of proprietors above men- 
tioned shall be called the first Class. And be it further 
enacted, That there shall be set apart and conveyed to the 
following description of proprietors as a Second Class, viz : 
To every freeholder residing within the said Corporation at 
the time of psssing this Act and not being a native thereof, 
and possessing a Freehold therein of the value of less than 
three hundred Dollars, at (sic) who shall at the time of pass- 
ing this Act, occupy a Dwelling House therein, one other 



Town Clerk's Recs., West Hurley, Field Book, p. 1. 
'Town Clerk's Recs., West Hurley, Field Book, pp. 3, 4. 



48 Dutch Village Communities 

certain equal share or Dividend of the said Common Lands, 
not less than two thirds in Value of such share or divi- 
dend as shall be set apart for proprietors of the first Class ; 
And also a like two-thirds share or dividend to every inhabi- 
tant not being a Freeholder as shall have supported a family 
and resided wathin the said Corporation the term of two 
years next before making such partition and who shall during 
that term have followed some trade or occupation." The lots 
were to be as near the respective dwellings, and as nearly 
equal, as possible. Among those who were to be granted a 
lot of the first Class, were also non-resident owners of free- 
hold of a value not less than two thousand dollars. The 
trustees were to settle all disputes, and to defray expenses by 
levying a tax on lots. They were given power to sell, after 
two years, the shares of those whose taxes were then unpaid. 
Under this act, the commissioners surveyed one hundred and 
sixty-eight lots, numbered regularly from 1 to 168, and Nov. 
13, 1806, the allotment seems to have been made at the 
house of " Peter Elmendorf Inholder," the result being duly 
recorded in the Field Book. 

This division of the common lands (both arable and wood- 
land) at Hurley, in the first decade of the present century, 
presents features which call to mind the customs of the early 
Teutonic community, to-day surviving in some of the Rhine 
countries.^ If it does not show a "periodic partition," it 
gives evidence of that distinctive feature of ancient commu- 
nal landholding, — the reservation of a portion of the domain 
for "distribution among new families." To give to one who 
had been merely a resident (not a freeholder) of the town of 
Hurley two years, and had, during that time, " followed some 



' Laveleye, Prim. Prop., p. 83. In speaking of the Allmends of Switzer- 
land, he says : " In 1826, the commune of PuUy-Petit put all its fands, 
previously divided, once more into community, and subjected them to a 
periodic partition among all the inhabitants every fifteen years, a part 
being reserved for distribution among new families." See also, Maine, 
Village Communities, pp. 81-87. 



On the Hudson River, 49 

trade or occupation,"^ a share in the aUotment of land which 
had been granted a hundred years before to Cornelius Cool 
and associates, "to their heires and assignes forever," and 
which had been enjoyed during the century as the common 
territory of the freeholders of the town, is to establish the 
purely communal character of the tenure during that period. 
The distribution was made probably in compliance with a 
petition to the Legislature from the towns-people, and w^as 
based not, as were most of the partitions of the common 
lands along the Hudson about that time, upon hereditary rights 
in the domain, but upon the communistic theory of the needs 
of the individual residents ; it was not per dirpes, but per 
capita. It was at once a readjustment of old titles and the 
conferring of entirely new ones.^ 

After this stride toward the holding of all lands in sever- 
alty, the freemen of Hurley still continued to meet in annual 
popular assembly to choose by majority vote " officers for the 
township of hurley," — the seven trustees, town clerk, asses- 
sors, constables, collectors, overseers of the poor, commis- 
sioners of the highway, road-masters, and fence- viewers.^ 

The town of New Paltz, lying south of Hurley and the 
Esopus, also claims special attention. There, many of the pecu- 
liar characteristics of early village community-life appeared 
more distinctly, and continued for a longer time than in other 
towns along the river. To-day the quiet village is a station 
on the Wallkill Vallev railroad, and one may reach it by 



1 Maine, Village Communities, p. 125. It is curious to note that Sir 
Henry Maine speaks of this provision for establishing trades as " yet another 
feature of the Indian cultivating groups which connects them with primi- 
tive western communities of the same kind." 

^ If it be asserted that this is only an incident of landlordship, that the 
nominal rent reserved kept the title in the sovereign, so that he might give 
the land to whomever he chose, the.fact remains that freeholders who evi- 
dently supposed they held the land in fee, dealt with it in such a way as 
would best subserve the needs of the whole community. 

=*Town Clerk's Records, West Hurley, Town Records, 1793-1832. 

4 



50 Dutch Village Communities 

steam from Kingston over a route, perhaps identical in part, 
with that taken by the little band of slow-moving pioneer 
settlers somewhat more than two hundred years ago. The 
pleasanter way for one to gain his first impressions of New 
Paltz, is to cross the Hudson from Poughkeepsie and drive 
directly westward over an excellent turnpike road, lying 
wholly within the territory of the original grant. Eight 
miles from the river a point is reached which commands a 
fine view of the surrounding country. In the north-west, 
the Catskill peaks stand out boldly against the horizon ; and 
in front, the nearer Shawangunk range stretches north and 
south, — a natural barrier beyond which the early settler did 
not venture. Sky Top, its most prominent point, marks the 
location of Lake Mohonk/ and is the grand boundary stone 
at the south-west corner of the New Paltz patent. Between 
this ancient landmark and the view-point of the spectator, is 
the valley of the Wallkill, whose cultivated fields present in 
summer an appearance strikingly unusual. Almost every- 
where the boundary lines seem to be rectangular, and the 
fields, on the slope of the opposite mountain, sown with dif- 
ferent kinds of grain or left as meadow land, look like the 
regular blocks of a variegated patchwork. Just below, in 
the valley, a mile away, on the east side of the stream, may 
be seen the church steeples and scattered houses of New Paltz. 
The road, entering the village from the east, becomes the main 
street, and, on either side of it, nearly to the long covered 
bridge by which it crosses the Walkill, are the stores and 
shops, constituting the local sources of supply for five or six 
hundred inhabitants. The neat, unpretentious, dwellings 
interspersed, are mostly modern, for this street did not become 
the chief thoroughfare until long after the early settlement, 
when the increasing agricultural population sought an outlet 
for their produce by way of the Hudson river to New York. 



' Spelled " Moggonck " in the Patent. In the Indian dialect it meant 
' on the great sky top." 



On the Hudson Rlrer. 51 

The streets running north and south, parallel to the stream, 
were the scenes of pioneer activity, and to-day one may dis- 
cover, here and there, the steep-roofed houses of colonial 
times, one of which shows the old port holes, and displays in 
iron letters the date, 1705. 

Tradition attributes the settlement at New Paltz to one of 
the incidents connected with the Indian massacre at Esopus in 
June, 16G3. Catherine Blanshan, the wife of Louis DuBois, 
was one of the captives carried away into the wilderness. 
DuBois with a band of the settlers started in pursuit, and, in 
following: the stream which was afterwards called the Wall- 
kill, they noticed the rich lands in the vicinity of the present 
village of New Paltz. The search was successful, the pris- 
oners were rescued from captivity, and in the more leisurely 
return to Esopus, Louis DuBois and his companions examined 
carefully the land which, by its beauty and apparent fertility, 
had before attracted their attention. Some years afterwards^ 
he and his associates purchased from the Indians the large 
tract of land, estimated to contain some 36,000 acres, including 
part of the present townships of New Paltz, Rosendale, and 
Esopus, and the whole of Lloyd,— bounded on the west by the 
Shawangunk^ mountains and on the east by the Hudson river. 
For this valuable grant the Indians received " 40 kettles, 40 
axes, 4 adzes, 40 shirts, 400 strings of white beads (wampum), 
300 strings of black beads, 50 pairs of stockings, 100 bars of 
lead, 1 keg of powder, 100 knives, 4 quarter-casks of wine, 
40 jars, 60 splitting or cleaving knives, 60 blankets, 100 
needles, 100 awls, and 1 clean pipe." ^ 



' May, 1677. 

2 This word is usually slurred in pronunciation so as to sound like "Shon- 
gum." Its meaning in the Indian dialect is somewhat doubtful. Rev. C. 
Scott, in an article on the subject (Collections of the Ulster Historical 
Society, I., pp. 229-33), suggests either "South Water," or the "Kill or 
Creek of the Shawanees.'" 

3 Ulster Co. Hist. (Everts & Peck, 1880), New Paltz, p. 5. The transla- 
tion above given has been the generally accepted renderintj of tlie Dutch 
words which represent the consideration for the grant. Kev. Ame Ven- 



52 Dutch Village Communities 

This purchase was soon confirmed by a patent signed by 
Gov. Andross, dated Sept. 29, 1677, granting to "Louis 
DuBois and partners," the land described, for the yearly rent 
of "five Bushels of good Winter wheat." The instrument 
now in the PTuguenot Bank at New Paltz, names the twelve 
patentees as follows : " Louis DuBois, Christian Doyo, Abra- 
ham Haesbroocq Andries Lefevre, Joan Broocq Pierre Doyo, 
Laurens Bivere Anthony Crospell, Abraham DuBois, Hugo 
Frere Isaack DuBois and Symeon LeFevre, their heyres and 
Assignes." All were Huguenots, who fleeing from kingly 
and church persecution in France, had found an asylum in the 
Lower Palatinate at Mannheim, and had probably spent some 
time in Holland also, whence they had come with the Dutch 
to Esopus. In memory of their German home on the banks 
of the Rhine and adjacent to the forest region of the Oden- 
wald, they named their new home on the Hudson, New 
Paltz, ^ or the New Palatinate, and here established, to a con- 
siderable degree, the local government and peculiar customs 
of the German village community. 

Local history asserts that " as soon as these hardy pioneers 
had established themselves upon their lands they proceeded to 
make an equitable division of them. This was done in a rude 
way, each family pc^rtion being measured off by paces and 
staked at the corners. These boundaries were never changed ; 
but to these tracts were given special names, such as Pashe- 
moy, Pashecanse, Wicon, Avenyear, Lanteur, Granpere, etc., 
which have survived two hundred years. The lands were at 
first tilled in Common and the pi'oceeds equally divided."^ 



nema, of New Paltz, who has recently given the subject attention, is inclined 
to think the Dutch word ^' Zeewandt," which has been usually translated 
" beads " (the white ones being used for wampum), should be rendered, " 400 
fathoms of material used for tish nets." He also reads, "40 oars," instead 
of "40 jars;" "GO pieces of dufl'el" (coarse woolen cloth), instead of "60 
cleaving knives"; and "1 measure of tobacco," instead of "1 clean pipe." 

' Sometimes spelled "Pals" in the early records; German, Pfalz. 

^Ulster County History (Everts & Peck, 1880), New Paltz, p. 6. See 
Edmund Eltinge, Colls. Ulster Hist. Soc, Vol. 1., Part 1, p. 47, 



On the Hudson River. 53 

Perhaps no documents now exist which estaV)lish the evi- 
dence of this early cultivation in common of tracts of the 
arable land by the numerous co-owners, but tradition, both 
trustworthy and direct, places the matter almost beyond 
question. One of the worthy representatives of her Huguenot 
ancestors told the writer a few weeks ago that in her younger 
days she used frequently to hear an old resident of New Paltz 
relate how his mother, a self-reliant, vigorous woman, was 
wont, after becoming a widow, to take her turn in caring for 
the common stock and crops, as her husband had done before. 
The small tracts thus cultivated in common were doubtless 
the choicest portions of the land near the Wallkill, in which 
all the inhabitants desired to have some share. Each year 
the co-owners determined what crops should be planted, and 
chose some one of their number to care for the interests of all. 
If there are no early documents to verify this tradition of a 
common cultivation and division of the produce, there are 
those which intimate a common ownership even in the arable 
land, and show conclusively such common rights in both 
pasture and woodland as are thoroughly characteristic every- 
where of Teutonic village community-life. 

In a will of Louis DuBois, dated March 30, 1686,^ it is 
provided in reference to New Paltz laud that "them that 
have home lotts and have built thereon shall keep the same — 
upon condition that the other of my children shall have so 
much land instead thereof in such convenient places as may 
be found most expedient for them in any place belonging to 
my said estate." ^ 

A deed^ in 1705, by Anthony Crespel, one of the pat- 
entees of the New Paltz, recites that he " Lawfully standeth 
seized and possest of y^ twelfth part of the whole ])attent of 
y* New paltz as by said patent " etc., and gives for divers 



■ There were two later wills. 

"Ulster County Clerk's Office Kecords, Liber of Deeds, AA., p. 49. 

3 Ulster County Clerk's Office Records, Liber of Deeds, A A., p. 386. 



54 Dutch Village Communities 

considerations to his daughter, " Severall lotts parcels and 
pieces of y^ above said part of land of the new paltz," one lot 
being described as " between a lott of Abraham dil boys and 
the Commons . . . Also the Just third part of y*: woods 
& Commons of y^ above & first mentioned twelfth part of 
land of S; Crespel that is nott y'" layd out and devided." It 
then provides that the land shall not " bee disposed of 
to strangers," ^ but gives full power to the children " to sell 
convey and sett over their respective parts and proportions of 
the above s*! parcells and lotts of land unto any of y^ family 
in blood of the said Anthony Crespel." In the so-called 
" New Paltz Orders," ^ the fencing of the common lands 
seems to include land not for pasturage, and presumably 
arable land. It is thus provided for in popular assembly : 
" We the inhabitants of y! Niew Pals in generall are met 
to-gether y': 23"' day of Feb. im to conclued concerning all 
our fences of the Land as also of the pastures to the plurality 
of votes according to the order of the warrant to the constable 
directed: . . . the N. Pals town shall to-gether make the 
fence from Jacob Hasbroucq, to the s^. gate, and so we shall 
begin the vasmakerslant ^ fences to the kill or kreek at the 
Landing place, to the erf'* of John Hasbroucq and every one 
of us must make his part or share at six Raeles as now is 
. . . More concerning the old pastures every one is obliged 
and bound to doe as his nebourgh that is to say the just half 
of y! fences of five Raels or otherwise & that good and 
sufficient. And as for y? kettel doing Dammage and so 
taken they shall be put in pound by him that shall 
thereunto be chosen or impoui-ed by the inhabitants of 
s? place. And each and every horse or cow beast so taken 

' The same exclusive provision whicli prevailed at Hurley. See p. 45. 

^ Kecords in Huguenot Bank at New Paltz. 

3 The meaning of this word is doubtful. The spelling is probably faulty. 

'•"Erf" means "inheritance," and in its use here shows that probably 
the Dutch spoke of the "home lot" as such, in distinction from the com- 
mon lauds. It is suggestive at least. 



On the Hudson River. 55 

in dam mage shall pay a poace nine pence for a fine, the one 
half for him there-unto chosen and the other half for the 
Towne. And as for the hogs they shall have no Liberties for 
to Runne free ; but as for the sheeps they may runne free 
untill that time that they goe in Dammage in y* Corne or in 
the pastures provided y^ fences be good and sufficient . . . 
And as for the horses which Rune upon the Land in the fale 
they shall be taken away the 30th of September . . . Con- 
cerning all the fences^ . . . each and every one is oblidged 
and bound to make and kepe his owne fence at the time Lira- 
itted or ordered by him thereunto chosen to take notice of s** 
fences, but in case any one neglict or will not doe or make 
his fence he shall pay for a fine six shillings, and the viewers 
of fences shall make or have made the s** fence or fences at his 
own charge as y^ Law Direct in such case." The " Orders " 
also imposed, upon any one leaving gates open, fines to pay 
the " cost and charges of the towne," and were recorded by 
" W. Nottingham Clerk." 

The patentees are said to have been called the " Twelve 
Men " or " Duzine," and to have had both legislative and 
judicial powers in town aiFairs. Three years before the death 
of the surviving patentee, Abraham, son of Louis Du Bois, 
the twenty-four proprietors of the New Paltz entered into an 
agreement^ dated April 21, 1728, which established the local 
government of the " Twelve Men " by popular election, and 
authorized them to fix titles "according to the severall Divi- 
sions and partitions that have been made between them [the 
patentees] by Parole without deed, and the other parts thereof 
yet remaining in common and undivided . . . within the 
bounds of the aforesaid Pattent." It states that, " we Doe by 

' It is interesting to compare these " New Paltz Orders" relating to the 
ancient institution, the " Common Fence," with the evidences of similar 
customs in New England, collected l)y Dr. Adams in his " (iermunic Origin 
of New England Towns." — " Studies," I., p. 32 of monograph just men- 
tioned. 

* Records in Huguenot Bank at New Paltz. 



56 Dutch Villa ge Communities 

these presents Covenant and Grant to and with each other 
that there shall and may be yearly and every year for ever, 
hereafter chosen and elected for the purposes above mentioned 
by the plurality votes of the fFreeholders and Inhabitants 
with: .1 the aforesaid Pattent Twelve good able and sufficient 
men ffreeholders and Inhabitants who have an Interest within 
the said pattent Representing the aforesaid Twelve Pattentees." 
. . . Further we " Give Grant and Bequeath unto the afore- 
said Twelve men or the Major part of them to be elected and 
nominated in manner as aforesaid full power and authority to 
act and sett in good order and unity all common affairs — 
Businesses or things Comeing before them belonging to or con- 
cerning the Right Title Interest or property of the Town- 
ship of the New Paltz aforesaid and commonalty within the 
said Pattent according to Law or Equity and to the best of 
their knowledge and understanding." Then follows a cove- 
nant to pay all charges disbursed by the " Twelve Men " for 
defending title, and giving deeds of partitions made by the 
twelve patentees in their life-time. Full power is also given 
them to make partition of undivided land, "as they shall 
from time to time see cause for . . . which Division is to be 
made in manner and forme following That is to say that the 
said Undivided Lands and premises, or such part thereof as 
they shall from time to time see cause for . . . shall be laid 
out in Twelve equal shares and Divisions soe that the one is not 
of more valine than the other and Then the aforesaid Twelve 
shares or Divisions shall be numbered and then the aforesaid 
Twelve men shall Draw Lotts for the same," each share in 
the allotment to be for the use of those who represent, by 
descent or otherwise^ the several patentees. The " Twelve 
Men " were empowered to give deeds for the parcels, and such 
conveyances were to remain forever. 

The character of the rights of commonage then enjoyed at 
New Paltz is well shown by a release^ in the following year 

' Now in possession of Edmund P^itinge, Esq. 



On the Hudson River. 57 

(Apr. 5, 1729), from the " Twelve Men " granting to Solomon 
and Louis DaBois and their heirs " full power and authority 
at all times forever hereafter to cut down, load have take and 
carry away all manner of Timber trees and stones standing 
. . . lying and being within any part of the Commontf and 
without tlie iFences and inclosures of any of the Inhabitants 
of the new paltz aforesaid in the same manner that the said 
owners and i)roprietors Doe use to Doe in the said Commons, 
and likewise to mow down and carry away any grass or hay 
growing without the fPences and inclosures and in the Com- 
mons^ . . . [iinder] such regulations as the owners and pro- 
prietors aforesaid in the said town cut hay in the Commons, 
to-geather with free liberty of ingress, egress and regress to 
and for the said Solomon Dubois and Lewis Dubois and their 
heirs or assignes "... Provided ahyays, " that they shall 
have no similar rights in inclosed lands nor take anything 
they may rightfully take in the uninclosed lands for any per- 
son outside of their flfour ffamilys liveing on the said tract of 
land of the said Solomon Dubois and Lewis Dubois." 

The " Twelve Men " under their authority, conferred in 
the agreement of 1728, to lay out the land to be divided "in 
Twelve equal shares and Divisions soe that the one is not of 
more vallue than the other," had the lots set off regularly 
from time to time, of the same size and shape, adjacent and 
numbered from 1 to 12 in each Division, — the North and 
South Divisions together constituting one long strip (or Tier) 
of similar lots, running for the most part north and south, 
parallel to the Wallkill.^ Almost all deeds of New Paltz 
property, executed after the signing of the agreement of 1728 
and before the general partition of the lands by the State legis- 

' In connection with these rights of commonage we find the ancient 
Pound. In 1765 one of the questions put to the voters of New Paltz was 
" whether Poundmasters shall be elected or every man be his own Pounder." 

* In such regular division of the territory by the " Twelve Men," may be 
found an explanation of the rectangular boundary lines which strike the 
eye of one who approaches New Paltz from the east. 



58 Dutch Village Communities 

lature at the beginning of the present century, contain refer- 
ence to this method of division. In one dated April 3, 1767, 
given by Noah Ehinge to Josiah Eltinge, the land is described 
as " on the east side of the Paltz River being . . . known by 
Lot number three, situate in the first twelve Lots or South 
Division of the New Division called the First Tier, lying 
eastward of the old Divisions on the east side of the Paltz 
River and adjacent thereunto." ^ One third part of one hun- 
dred and eighty acres was granted. 

A wilP of Roeloff Eltinge, dated 1745, gives among other 
bequests the half part of his share in sundry " Lotts of Land 
laid out within the Limitts of the Pattent of the new Paltz 
afores'! fronting upon hudsons River and extending westerly 
from the said River one mile & a half." In this same will 
there is evidence, not only that between the Tiers of divided 
lands large tracts lay undivided and owned in common, but 
also, that before the middle of the last century the shares in 
such common land were becoming minutely subdivided. The 
testator bequeathed to his son Noah all his " farnie Lands 
meadows " etc., in the New Paltz, " and also all that the one 
third part of the one sixth and one sixtieth part of all the 
undivided Land within the Bounds of the Pattent of the New 
Paltz afores-!." 

Thirty years later, and nearly a hundred years after the 
granting* of the patent, fifty-two proprietors of the New Paltz 
entered into an agreement,^ dated April 30, 1774, for the 
common defence of their territory, — a fact which shows the per- 



' Doc. in possession of Jacob Elting, Esq. 

^ Document now in possession of Jacob Elting, Esq. 

^ Records in Huguenot Bank at New Paltz. There is also an earlier 
agreement, dated May 23, 1744, by which the signers pledge themselves, 
under heavy penalty, " To Defend Joyntly the whole Tract . . . and to 
stand in mutual Defence of each other Lot or Lots Farm and Farms against 
all Incroachments and Pretences of Right To the lands forever . . . For 
Fifteen whole and consecutive years." The " Twelve Men" were to deter- 
mine the amouut of money needed. 



On the Hudson River. 69 

sistence of their village community customs and the extent to 
M-hich the subdivision of the common property had then been 
carried. The agreement recites the patent of 1677, and the 
articles of 1728 by which the "Twelve Men" had been 
permanently established, and then goes on to say : " That each 
and every one of us whose hands and seals are hereunto set 
and our respective Heirs and Assigns, shall and will advance, 
disburse and Pay unto the said twelve Men for the time being 
or to the Major Part of them, such a proportionable part of 
the said common stock as we respectively have here-under 
annexed to our several and respective names and that as many 
times and as often as it shall be requisite and necessary for the 
defending the said Tract of Land, or any part thereof." It 
was stipulated that the major part of the " Twelve Men " 
should settle disputes as to what were necessary disbursements, 
and the proprietors bound themselves to the " Twelve Men " 
" in the Penal sum of I'wo Hundred Pounds current ]\Ioney 
of New York." Among the fifty-two who signed were : 
Daniel Lefcver ^t part, Benjamin I. Freer ^h part, 

Jacob Louw ^h "' , Jacobus Hasbrouck sV " , 

Anthony Yelverton z\ " , Josia Eltinge tVV parts, 

And' Bevier ih " , Noach Eltinge tV part, 

Jonas Hasbrouck t\o " , Abraham doiau tVo parts. 
Much discussion was provoked concerning the validity of 
the above agreement, and, as is so often the case, the promi- 
nent lawyers consulted diifered in opinion. Egbert Benson, 
Oct. 5, 1791, asserted that "it is wholly incompetent to the 
purposes for which it was intended,"^ — that is, to bind the 
shares of the land in perpetuity to a proportional contribu- 
tion. Earlier in the same year John Addison had advised 
the "Twelve Men" "that the Instrument is valid in Law, 
and the sums all recoverable." - This was also the opinion 
of Clinton. That the agreement was still in force twenty- 



' Records in the Huguenot Bank at New Paltz. 
* Records in the Huguenot Bank at New Paltz. 



60 Dutch Village Communities 

four years after its execution, is shown by an entry of May 
23, 1798, in the book of the "Twelve Men" containing the 
records of their transactions : " It is agreed by the Majority 
of the Twelve Men ... to Rase the sum of Two Hundred 
Pounds for and Towards Defending the Bounderies of the 
New paltz Pattent and the proportion of each man is aflixed 
oposite to his name to Base the above mentioned sum and 
each Twelve man is to collect his proportion of the sum and 
pay it to the Twelve Men on or before the fifteenth day of 
August next." ^ 

For more than a hundred years, the " Twelve Men " or 
" Duzine " of New Paltz, had practically constituted the only 
legislative and judicial tribunal of the village. No doubt an 
appeal lay to the colonial government, but, so far as is known, 
none seems to have been taken. From 1677 to 1785, the 
"Common Book" of the "Duzine" contained the most 
important village records. In March of the latter year, an 
act^ of the legislature incorporated the township under the 
state government, and confirmed the grants and partitions of 
the " Twelve Men." ^ But apparently the freeholders of 
New Paltz still continued to elect each year, as before, 
their "Twelve Men" for the supervision of local affairs,^ 

' Records in the Huguenot Bank at New Paltz. 

''An "exemplification" of this act is among the records of the town 
now in the Huguenot Bank. The act provided that tliose taking by lot 
under the partition "shall be deemed ... to have been seized severally 
in fee simple of the said Lots, or parcels of Land resiDSctively ; " and it adds 
that "the partition hereby confirmed shall be deemed and adjudged to be 
as good evidence of an estate in severalty under the said Paltz Patent as if 
such partition had been made according to the course of the Common 
Law." There seems to be no record at New Paltz, as there is at Hurley, 
of provision being made, in the partition of the common territory, for such of 
the inhabitants as had never before been freeholders. 

^ An advertisement of partition by the commissioners appeared in the 
Albany Gazette, Aug. 9, 1792. 

■* Though, after the incorporation of the town, the "Twelve Men" had 
little else to do than to determine the land-titles of the town and preserve 
the records of previous divisions. 



On the Hudson River. 61 

even into the present century. The Last record in the 
Book of the Twelve Men tells us that, as late as April, 
1824, "At the annual Townmeeting of the freeholders and 
Inhabitants of the Town of Kew Paltz on the first tuesday 
of April 1824 the following persons were chosen and elected 
by plurality of votes of the freeholders & inhabitants of the 
patent of New paltz for twelve men by Virtue & in persu- 
ence of a certain instrument in writing made for that pur- 
pose." The record also names the chosen representatives, 
desio-nating for each, respectively, the share of some one of the 
original patentees. One of the "Twelve Men" elected at this 
time was Daniel DuBois, who had been chosen to the same office 
for the four preceding years. By members of his family, the 
papers of the " Twelve Men," now in the Huguenot Bank, 
were brought to " a meeting held at the house of Benjamin 
D. Smedes on the 3rd day of Apr. 1858 of the Inhabitants 
of the town New Paltz persuant to public notice," for the 
purpose of choosing a custodian for the documents of " the 
Twelve." ^ These facts would seem to indicate that Daniel 
DuBois, who lived nntil thirty-three years ago (March 15, 
1852), was the last survivor^ of the last "Duzine;" and thus 
he might have claimed the unique distinction of perpetuating 
in his own person, as late as the middle of the 19th century, an 
institution older than the Christian era. 

No account of the town of New Paltz would be complete, 
if it did not make some mention of the marked character 
of the religious life which produced, side by side with so 
interesting a civil organization, a noteworthy church estab- 
lishment. When the Indians were overtaken by Louis 



1 The meeting " Eesolved that the patent papers be kept and held by 
Methusalem Eltinge. Abm P. Lefever Pres. Ab5 H. Deyo Jr. Sec." 

^ Dr. Peltz, however, in an address at the DuBois Eeunion in 1875, says : 
"One gentleman sits before me to-day who has been chosen the repre- 
sentative of his tribe." Query : Did he refer to Ab2; P. Lefever, who was 
president of the above mentioned meeting, and who did not die till 1879? 
The records, however, do not show his election as one of the " Twelve Men." 



62 Dutch Village Communities 

DuBois and his band, in that journey which inchided the 
discovery of the New Paltz lands, the captive women were 
staying the hands of the savages by singing the 137th psalm ;^ 
and more than a dozen years afterward when the little group 
of Huguenot settlers, who had left their Dutch friends at the 
Esopus, reached the J?-i- Cor- near the present village of New 
Paltz, one of the number read from the French Bible the 
23rd psalm, and then led the company in prayer. 

After their settlement, almost at once, the community 
erected a rough log house to serve both for school and 
church;^ These Huguenot pioneers at New Paltz, having 
been driven from France to the Palatinate in Germany, as a 
temporary asylum from the fires of persecution which were 
everywhere lighted in France, even before the formal Revo- 
cation of the Edict of Nantes, brought with them to their 
" new Palatinate " that fervor of religious life born only of 
martyrdom, — a fervor quite as strong as, and more tolerant than, 
that which inspired the early settlers of New England. It is 
not strange, therefore, that within six years the Huguenots 
at New Paltz obtained a minister, the Rev. Pierre Daillie, 



' This interesting episode has been commemorated by Edmund Eltinge, 
Esq., of New Paltz, in a Lirge historical oil painting now in his possession, 
which he liad painted for him by a skilful artist over thirty years ago. In 
the foreground are the captive women near a group of Indians, and on the 
right, just emerging from the woods, are Louis DuBois and his Huguenot 
companions, dressed in the costume of their day, advancing from the 
thicket with tlieir guns to put the Indians to flight. In the back-ground, 
beyond the Wallkill Valley, is the Shawangunk range with its prominent 
point, " Sky To[)," strongly defined against the horizon ; and farther in the 
distance, to the north, is a glimpse of the Catskills. The rich autumn 
foliage of the region is well put upon the canvas, and, altogether, the paint- 
ing is a noteworthy representation of this memorable incident in the early 
pioneer life of the New Paltz settlers. 

2 Tri-Cor refers to the three cars, or wagons, in which the settlers had 
brought their worldly goods. 

^ The Dutch had in their early charters to the West India Company pro- 
vided for both schoolmaster and minister in the Hudson river settlements, 
and the Huguenots showed themselves equally zealous in the cause of edu- 
cation and religion. 



On the Hudson River. 63 

" and formed themselves into a congregation by the name of 
the Walloon Protestant Church, after the manner and discip- 
line of the Church of Geneva."^ The first record of this 
church organization is interesting. It is in French, and the 
following translation of a portion shows that the popular 
methods of government which marked the civil life of the 
community, prevailed thus early also in their church estab- 
lishment :" The 22nd of January, 1683, Mr. Pierre Daillie, 
minister of the Word of God, arrived in Xew Paltz and 
preached twice on the following Sunday, and proposed to the 
heads of the families that they should choose by majority of 
votes, by the fathers of families, one Elder and one deacon, 
which they did, and chose Louis DuBois for elder and Hugh 
Frere for deacon to assist the minister in guiding the mem- 
bers of the church that meets in New Paltz; "^ 

This Veglise de Nouveau Palatinat, as it was early called, 
is probably the only chur.cli in America whose records are 
written successively in three languages, each period illus- 
trating a different epoch in the church life and government. 
Approximately, they may be said to have been kept fifty 
years in French, seventy in Dutch, and since the beginning 
of this century in English. Within twenty years after the 
election of the first church officers, the records appear to have 
been partly in Dutch, and this language was chiefly in use 
throughout the eighteenth century, — a fact which shows the 
dominating character of Dutch influence in colonial New 
York, even in a settlement which, like New Paltz, was at first 
entirely Huguenot. 

In marked contrast with the religious intolerance of the 
New England colonists, was the broad Christian liberality of 
the Dutch and Huguenots who laid the foundations of New 
York State. Often, when their own French church was with- 
out a pastor, the Huguenot settlers of the New Paltz went 



* Hasbrouck MS. See " Life and Times of Louis DuBois," by Anson 
DuBois, DuBois Reunion 1876, Proceedings, p. 67. 

" See Fac-simile of Record, DuBois Reunion, 187G, Proceedings, pp. 8, 9. 



64 Dutch Village Communities 

with their Dutch frieuds to the Dutch church at Kingston to 
attend the communion service, or to have the right of baptism 
administered to their children ; ^ and, in turn, the increasing 
Dutch population at New Paltz not only worshipped in the 
French church of the Huguenots, but even acted as its officers 
and wrote its records in tlieir native language. In this tran- 
sition period of life and language, from French to Dutch, the 
ministers, it is likely, were frequently called upon to give 
alternate discourses in the two languages,^ as it is certain they 
gave them in Dutch and English, during the later transition 
at the close of the last century. 

So close, indeed, was the agreement between the Huguenots 
and the Dutch at New Paltz, that we find the former, although 
they had been accustomed to a more independent church gov- 
ernment, joining those of the Dutch, who, in the sharp con- 
troversy between the Coetus and Conferentia parties, held with 
the Conferentia faction that their, ministers must be ordained 
in Holland by the classis of Amsterdam. Thus the French 
Reformed Church of the early settlers merged into the Dutch 
Reformed Church of New Paltz, which to-day stands as the 
exponent in the community of a religious life that gained 
much of its original strength under French and Spanish per- 
secutions. In New York, as in New England, the desire for 
religious freedom accompanied and inspired the persistent 
purpose to obtain popular local self-government, which made 
possible the formation of our United States. 

Having examined, somewhat in detail, many marked types 
of village community government in New Netherland and 
New York, one may well pause to consider the precise signifi- 



' In the early settlements of New Amsterdam, some seventy or eighty 
years before the time with which we are dealing, "for many years Hugue- 
not and Dutch worshiped together." — Proceedings of Huguenot Society of 
America, I., p. 27. 

* In a French will of 1730, there is a gift of a Bible, to go to the 
church, for the reading of the French service. The will is an eminently 
religious document, and by it the maker bequeaths everything to " 'eglise 
du nouveau pals." 



On the Hudson River. • 65 

cance of the bond of union which thus brings together the 
Ehine and the Hudson into close institutional relationship, — 
a relationship closer perhaps than even that between Old 
England and New England. It should be noted in the first 
place that the Hudson river towns may properly be spoken of 
as Dutch village communities, although only fifty years under 
Dutch rule, and composed in part of emigrants from France, 
Germany, and Great Britain. A writer,^ as late as 1750, says 
that more than half of the inhabitants of New York were 
Dutch, and not until the close of the last century did Dutch 
give way to English as the prevailing language among the 
people.^ Dutch manners and customs, Dutch forms of gov- 
ernment, civil and ecclesiastical, prevailed not only in the 
early settlements, but persisted and remained dominant long 
after English rule supplanted that of Holland. 

These outward forms of Dutch influence in early New 
York are interesting chiefly as exponents of the character of 
the colonists. It was the spirit of the people of the United 
Netherlands, which in the Fatherland had, through centuries, 
kept the feudal system from gaining there the foothold it 
olbtained in France and England, and had at last thrown off 
the Spanish yoke, — it was this spirit which, prevailing in the 
colonies along the Hudson river, contended persistently for 
the rights of popular representative government, until they 
were attained in the General Assembly of 1664, just at the 
downfall of the Dutch West India Company's monopoly, and 
which again, after twenty years of arbitrary English rule, 
forced from an unwilling government the Representative 
Assembly of 1683. 



» Eev. Mr. Burnaby (1750), Valentine's History of N. Y. City, p. 296. 

** The Ions prevalence of the Dutch language, which has been noted in 
the New Paltz church records, was not merely local, but general throughout 
the colony. Smith, in his History of New York, writing in 1756, (more 
than ninety years after the first English possession,) says that " the slierifla 
find it difficult to obtain persons sufficiently acquainted with the English 
tongue to serve as jurors in the Courts of law." 

5 



66 Dutch Village Communities 

If one traces the origin and growth of this liberty-loving 
sentiment of the Dutch people, one is carried back to the 
earliest ages of north European history, — to a time, a century 
or more before the Christian era, when a hardy race called by 
Csesar, the Menapii, occupied the country between the Ehine 
and the Meuse, and the Schelde and the ocean .^ They (the 
Menapii) " held alliance with the Romans, hut never submitted 
to their yoke at all nor permitted them to introduce their lan- 
guage, but retained in perpetual use the Teutonic (Theotiscara) 
dialect, now Dutch. Therefore, on this account, they called 
themselves Frauci (Free Men) from the liberty they enjoyed.'* 
These early inhabitants of the Netherlands seem to have been 
not only free-men, but also, as their name imports, (it being 
derived from two German words MEEN—AFFT, Dutch, 
Gemeen-Schap,) a community of nations or a confederation.^ 
If this be so, one may trace from this earliest alliance of 
independent Teutonic tribes, those ideas of government which, 
sixteen hundred years later (in 1579), were embodied in the 
union of Utrecht ; and, in turn, from this more recent confed- 
eration of States in the Netherlands, one may derive by a 
continuous race-tradition, through the Dutch village commu- 
nities on the Hudson river, that principle of the union of 
sovereign powers which gave form to our United States.* 



' Gen. J. Watts de Peyster, Netherlanders, p. 23. 

* Gen. J. Watts de Peyster, Netherlanders, p. 19. 
' Gen. J. Watts de Peyster, Netherlanders, p. 24. 

He cites many authorities and among them Olivarius Vredius Brugis 
Flandorum apiid Joannem Baptistam Kerchovium . . . Anno 1639. 

* Brodhead, History of New York, p. 362, bears out this theory of the 
influence of Teutonic example by stating that the doctrine of States Rights 
is three centuries old, and by asserting that " The Union of Utrecht . . . 
was essentially the model for the first union of American Colonies." He 
even explains on the same theory, the confederation of the New England 
Colonies against the Dutch and the Indians in 1643, and notes that the 
Plymouth immigrants had learned valuable lessons in constitutional liberty 
during a twelve years sojourn in Holland. However that may be, it is cer- 
tain that the Puritans have as little right to claim originality in establishing 
a confederacy, as in using the venerable town-meeting for the management 



On the Hudson River. 67 

Special evidence of the close relationship between the free 
institutions of the Rhine and the Hudson is furnished by the 
village of New Paltj::. The first proprietors were all Hugue- 
nots, — DuBoises, LeFevres, Deyos, Freres, and Hasbroucks, 
who, fleeing from France, had escaped the oppression both of 
the church and of the feudal system, and had probably 
gained familiarity with the free village community govern- 
ment, afterwards established here, during their residence on 
the banks of the Rhine in the German Palatinate,^ where 
to-day, in the clearings of the adjacent Odenwald, are to be 
found almost perfect types of the primitive Germanic mark. 
Yet another tie binds New Paltz and her local institutions 
to the old world. Only fifteen years was the " New Palati- 
nate" a purely Huguenot community. As early as 1703, the 
Dutch element was introduced in the person of Roeloif 
Eltinge upon his marriage with Sarah DuBois, and thereafter 
the Eltiugs (and to a less degree other Dutch families) became 
prominent in the affairs of the township ; so much so, indeed, 
that seventy years later, one member of the family — Noah 
Elting — owned one-seventeenth of all the common and undi- 
vided territory of the original grant. It is a curious and 

of their local affairs. Both were Teutonic heritages reaching America from 
Holland and Germany directly, by a purer line of descent, than from Eng- 
land, which, to carry out the figure, may be called a relative of the half blood. 
How strong the influence of Holland and Germany was, in shaping the 
growth of our country, must be apparent to any careful reader of the events 
just prior to the Kevolution. Not only in New York, but elsewhere in tlie | 
colonies, patriotic minds were impressed by " the Helvetic Confederacy and 
the States of the United Netherlands as glorious examples of what ' a petty 
people in comparison ' could do when acting together in the cause of lib- 
erty." Frothingham, Kise of the Kepublic of the United States, p. 199 ; 
quoting Richard Bland of Virginia (1766). 

"United States," as a legal term, it is interesting to note, dates from 
Monday, Sept. 9, 1776, when Congress "Eesolved, That in all Continental 
Commissions and other instruments, where, heretofore, the words 'United 
Colonies' have been used, the stile be altered, for the future, to the ' United 
States.' " Journals of Congress, Vol. I., p. 470. The expression had before 
been used in the Declaration of Independence. 

' Conf. Fiske, American Pol. Ideas, p. 52. 



68 Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River. 

interesting fact that Jan Eltinge^ — the father of the first 
New Paltz freeholder Roeloff — was, as is shown by his certifi- 
cate of church membership,^ born in 1632 at Beyle, in the 
province of Drenthe in Holland ; in which, says Laveleye, 
" the Germanic mark still exists ; . . . surrounded on all 
sides by marsh and bog, this province formed a kind of island 
of sand and heath, on which ancestral customs were preserved 
in their entirety. Even in our day we find the ancient organ- 
ization of the Saxon mark ; " ^ De Amicis, also, in his recent 
work on "Holland and Its People," speaking of Drenthe, 
says : " Every thing in this strange province is antique and 
mysterious. The customs of primitive Germany are found 
here, tillage of the ground is common on the Esschen, the 
rustic horn calling the peasants to labor, the houses described 
by Roman historians, and over all this ancient world the 
perj>etual mystery of an immense silence."^ 

It is not strange, therefore, that in New Paltz the union of 
the Huguenots and the Dutch, who had brought the forms of 
primitive local government from two such sources as the forest 
regions of the Odenwald and the marshy peat fields of 
Drenthe, should result in a continuance of ancient village 
community customs here on the Hudson river, even into the 
present century. 

From the banks of the Rhine, the germs of free local insti- 
tutions, borne on the tide of western emigration, found here, 
along the Hudson, a more fruitful soil than New England 
afforded for the growth of those forms of municipal, state, 
and national government, which have made the United States 
the leading Republic among the nations. 

Thus in a new, and historically important sense, may the 
Hudson river be called the " Rhine of America." 



'He was a magistrate at Hurley, in 1683. 

2 Colls. Ulster Hist. Society, Vol I., Part 2, p. 177. The original certifi- 
cate is in the possession of Edmund Eltinge, Esq. 
^Laveleye, Prim. Prop., p. 282. 
•* De Amicis, Holland and its People, -p. 390. 



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I. American Journal of Mathematics. 

S. Newcomb, Editor, and T. Craig, Associate Editor. Quarterly. 4to. 
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Eowland's Photographs of the Normal Solar Spectrum. $10 per set 
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Studies in Logic. By members of the Johns Hopkins University. C. S. Peirce, 
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The Development and Propagation of the Oyster in Maryland. By 
W.K.Brooks. 1884. 193 pp. 4to; 13 plates and 3 maps. $5.00. 

On the Mechanical Equivalent op Heat. By H. A. Rowland. 1880. 
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New Testament Autographs. By J. Rendel Harris. 1882. 54 pp. 8vo; 4 
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1 . ]Marble Statue of Artemis in the Museum at Constantinople ; 

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2. Law Code of the Kretan Gortyna. I. (Introd., Text, Trausl., 

Comment) ; by Aug. C. Merriam. 

3. Mosaic of the Fa9ade of San Paolo-fuori-le-mura of Rome ; 

by A. L. Frothixgham, Jr. 

4. Inscribed Base of an archaic bronze statue from Mt. Ptous ; 

by Salomon Reixach. 

5. The Monoliths of San Juan Teotihuacan, Mexico ; by Wm. H. 

Holmes. 

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by A. L. Frothixgham, Jr. 

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CHARLES SCRI BNER'S SONS' NEW BOOKS. 

12th thousand of the Authorized Edition. 
THE RUSSIANS at the GATES of HERAT. By Charles Mabvin, 
principal authority of the r^nulisli press on tlie ( entral Asia Dispute. Paper, 
50 cents; cloth, $1.00. Illnstrated with portraits and maps. 
This book is the most important contribution to a complete understanding of the present 
quarrel between England and Russia that has yet appeared. Its author, Mr. Charles Marvin, is 
probably the best livin}; authority upon the whole subject. ... To all who wish to be well 
informed on the menacing quarrel between the two great powers, Mr. Marvin's book may be 
heartily recommended.— iVeia York Tribune. 

Stepniak's Great Woi'k. 
RUSSIA UNDER THE TZARS. By Stepniak, author of "Underground 
Russia." Hindered into Enylisli l.y William Westall. 1 vol. 12mo, $1.50. 

The most inipuitaiil cKutriliuiiou yet iikkIc to a knowledge of the Russian Empire of to-day. 
In bis book " Undersrouiul Russia," "which had a great sale in America, the author showed the 
tlioroughness of his information, and it aroused very great expectations for this more extended 
work. The new volume is a revelation, and coming just at this time, after a long and careful 
liri^l)aration, will meet a demand lor an inner histoiy of Russian government methods told boldly 
and fearlessly. 

Rarely is a great storv narrated so simply and vet so effectively. — New York Times. 

THE RESCUE OF GREELY. By Commander W. S. Schley, U. S. N., 
and Professor J. Russell Soley, U. S. N. With maps and numerous illus- 
trations. 1 vol. 8vo, $3.00. 
This is an admirable record of one of the most thrilling episodes of Arctic adventure. ... In 

every rfspect the narrative is a model of good taste.— jVew) York Tribune. 

ASSYRIOLOGY : Its Use and Abuse. By Professor Francis Brown. 1 
vol. lliino, !?1.U0. 
Tlie method and scope of this book are new. It is designed to show, with illustrations, and in 
a familiar and popular style, what the chief advantages are which Old Testament students can 
derive from Assyrian discovery, and also some of the dangers to which they are exposed. A 
valualile list ol the more important books on the subject is appended. 

AMERICAN PRESBYTERIANISM: ITS ORIGIN AND 
GROWTH, togetlier with an Appendix of Letters and Documents, many 
of wiiieli have recentlv been discovered. By Charles Augustus Briggs, 
D.D. 1 vol. 8vo, with "Maps, $3.00. 

The book traces the origin and growth of Presbyterianism in Great Britain and its develop- 
ment in America, with the aid of much new material, including " A Description of New England," 
bv .lolin Eliot, in 1650. It recounts the growth of tlie foremost missionary movements of Great 
Britain and America in the 17th and 18th centuries, and sketches the constitutional progress of 
all liraiiclies of the Presbyterian family. It has so much to do with the origin and early history 
ol towns and colonies that it will interest, not only Presbyteriaas, but that large class of students 
Willi are devoted to the study of the early history of America. 
OBITER DICTA. One volume, 16mo, with an American preface, $1.00. 

.Something jileasant to retd and delightful to own ; a bit of literature to be brought out fre- 
quently and read to an old friend, but to lend with caution. The author perfectly preserves the 
s|)irit of his title ; his criticism is enjoyable less because it is so keen than because it is so care- 
less.— 77;e Crific. 

MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY. By Dr. Philip Schaff. Being Vol. 
i V, " History of tlie ( hristiim ( 'hurch." 8vo, $4.00. 

The book covers the history of i he ( hurch in the Middle Ages from Gregory I. (590) to Gregory 
VII. (107:i). and di^ usse- a most iiii.n sting but comparatively little known period, teeming with 
events of the -reaieM impoiiaiie ■ in ihe history of Christianity and civilization. 

"The ]nex( lit \oliiiiie -trills almost an encyclopedia in its range, telescopical in its grand Sur- 
vey of the held, iiiieidseo|iieal in its detailed and minute investigation." — Biiff'atn Times. 

THE NEW DEPARTURE IN COLLEGE EDUCATION. By Presi- 
dent .James McCosh. Pamphlet, 15 cts. Ptildished March 10. 
Dr. MeCosh's paper, read liefore the Nineteenth Centuiy Club, contains a reply to President 
Eliot's defence of the '• New Dejiaiture." 

TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. AIAAXH Ti2N AS2AEKA 
AliO:;;TOAi2N. Edited witii a Translation, Introduction, and Notes, by Ros- 
WELL D. Hitchcock, D.D., and Professor Francis Brov^^n. 1 vol. 12mo, $2.00. 



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COLONIAL NEW YORK. 

PHILIP SCHUYLER AND HIS FAMILY, 

By HOX. GEO ROE W. SCHUYLER. 

Two Volumes, Octavo. Vellum Cloth, Gilt Top, Uncut Edges. Price, $10.00. 
ONLY FIVE nUNDREn COriES fRINTED. 



Mr. Schuyler began this work, as he explains in his preface, by the study of the genealogy of 
his own family; but, as he went on, he found himself led irresistibly into a wider field than 
that of mere family annals, and he ended by the very important contribution to Colonial New 
York history which these volumes now contain. The families and descendants of Philip and 
Peter Schuyler have been connected by marriage or association with so large a proportion of the 
older New York families, that Mr. Schuyler's lesearches have taken the widest range. The Van 
Schlichtenhorsts, Van Cortlandts, Van Rensselaers, Livingstons, Verplancks and many more are 
among those into whose family history his investigations have led him ; and the original records 
upon which his information is founded have yiekh d him a multitude of curious facts that will 
be new even to those specially interested in these genealogies. There has been no recent contri- 
bution of such moment to our earlier State and family annals. 

A SUPERB VOLUME. 

T I R Y M S : 

THE PREHISTORIC PALACE OF THE KINGS OF TIRYNS ; THE 
RESULTS OF THE LATEST EXCAVATIONS. 

By DR. HENRY SCHLIEMANN, 

Author of " Mi/cenae" " IHos," etc. The Preface by Prof. F. Adler, and Contrihulions by Dn. 

William Dorpfeld. With 1S8 Woodc^h, 24 Pla/es in (Jiroiixi-Lilhoffraphy, 

\ Mapnndi Plaiu. One Voluine. Umjiil Orliin,. Sin. no. 

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ENGLAND, FEANCE, GERMANY, AND AMERICA. 

" The bust, most iuleiesling and most important of L)r. Scliliemann's works." — Eugene tichuyler. 



THE HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE. By Prof. William Scherer. Trans- 
lated under ttic supeivisiun of Uk. .Max Mlller. 2 vols. 12mo. SS.SO. 

Profe sor Scherer's is the tirst history of German literature worthy to be called at the same 
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who know its extreme conciseness — for it fills two volumes in small octavo. It is already a rt'cog- 
rized authoiity of the highest rank in its own country, and this translation, with the sponsor- 
ship of the first of Anglo-iierman scholars, will occupy a place among our own means of instruc- 
tion which there has heen nothing else to fill. 

THE SILENT SOUTH. Togethir with "The Freedman's Case in Equity" and "The Convict 
LeuM- Sy,^tem." Hy GKoRdi: W. Cable. 1vol. 12ino. With Portr;iit. $1.00. 

This voliiiue cuiitains Mr. Cabk's remarkable es>ays on the negio question which have 
attracted so iiuich attention among the intelligent people both in the North and South. It is a 
strong appeal for the uegro which is certain to create a wide and earnest discussion. To those 
who have not read any of Mr. Cable's papers on the subject, this book will be a revelation. 
TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist in India, 
Cevlon, the Malay l^eninsula and Borneo. By William T. Hornaday. 1vol. 8vo. With 
Maps and Illustrations. $4 00. 

"Since the visit of Mr. A. II. Wallace in the Malay Archipelago, no such important addition 
has been made to the data of natural history as is embodied in this recoid of exact and ample 
observ.ation in a seldoin-penetraled field." — New York Sun. 

THE GREEK ISLANDS, AND TURKEY AFTER THE WAR. By Hknky M. Field, 
D. D., author of ''E^ypt to Japan," "Among the iloly Hills," etc. 1 vol. 12mo. Wih Maps 
and Illustrations. $1.50. 

Dr Field's famous series of books of travels, which began with the volume "From the Lakes 
of Killarney to the Golden Horn," receives in this volume a final and a particularly interesting 
contribution. The book is opportune, since it gives a striking picture of that country, aliout 
which the whole Eastern Question revolves, and of the rapid and important changes which have 
been, and are still going on in the Greek Archipelago and Turkey. 1 he maps are of special 
importance and value. 
ARMY LIFE IN RUSSIA. By Lihut. F.V.Greene, U.S.A. Anewedition. lvol,12mo. $1.2,5. 

"It is most tortunate for the reputation of our country and our army that we had such an 
officer to send to the far-away land of Turkey in Europe, and most, creditable to our War 
Department that it sent such a man. His book deserves to be universally read, and we arc sure 
that no persons whom these lines may lead to purchase it will fail to rejoice that they have been 
written." — The Nation. 

These books fur sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on receipt of price, by 

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The Presbyterian Review for 1886. 



Messrs. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS beg to announce that they have become the publi.shers 
of The Presbyterian Review, which will remain under the editorial management of the 
Presbyterian Review Assoeiatiou. In .lanuary it enters upon its seventh year. 

Its editorial staff represents six of the leading Theulogical Seminaries of the Presbyterian 
Church of America : 

MANAGING EDITORS: 
Charles A. Briggs, D. D. Fkancls L. Patton, D. D., LL. D. 

ASSOCIATE EDITORS: 
Ransom B. Welch, D. D., LL. D. W. H. Jeffers, D. D., LL. D. 

James Eells, I). D, LL. D. Thomas H. Skinner, D. D. 

With these are also associated : Talbot W. Chambers, D. D., of the Reformed ( Dutch) Church ; 
Robert Flint, D. D., LL. D., of the Church of Scotland; Henry Calderwood, LL. D., of the 
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland; Thomas Croskery, D. D., of the Presbyterian Church 
ot Ireland; VV. G. Blaikik, D. D., LL. D., of the Free Church of Scotland; and Principal Wil- 
liam Cavan, D. D., of tlie Presbyterian Church of Canada. 

Daring the coming year the Review will be made better and stronger than ever before, and 
no expense or pains will be spared to make it the must thoroughly satisfactory theological 
Review of its kind in America. 

Among the features of the January number, which will be in the hands of subscribers promptly 
on the first of the >ear, are the following articles: 

Pkof. Witherow, of Londonderry, Ireland, on the Christian Ministry. 

Dr. Kdson, of Indianapolis, on John Todd, a Hume Missionary/ Sketch. 

Prof. Knox, of Tokio, Japan, on the Missionari/ Proliinn in Japan. 

Dr. Henry J. Van Dykk, of Brooklyn, on Ordiiuiiinii /.< thi; Christian Ministry. 

Prof. Francis L. Patton, of Princeton, on Thr Mri.iplni.sirs of Moral Obligation. 

PkINCIPAL Ca-<'EN, of Toronto, on the Revised Version ns a n-hole. 

Critical Notes by Rev. D. D. Bannerman, of Perth, Scotland ; Prof. Francis Brown, of New 
York, and others. 

Editorial Notes by the Editors: 

Book Reviews bv A. A. Hodge, C. W. Hodge, F. L. Patton, W. H. Green, T. W. Hunt, C. A. 
Aiken, of Princeton ; F. Brown, G. L. Prkntiss, T. S. Hastings, W. G. T. Shedd, C. A. Briggs, 
of Union Sem. ; E. D. Morris, John DeWitt, of Lane Sem. ; Herrick Johnson, of Chicago ; B. B. 
Warfield, of Allegheny ; R. B. Welch, of Auburn ; Howard O.sgood, of Rochester ■ H. M. 
Baird T. W. Chambers, Marvin R. Vincent, of New York; Principal McVicar, and Prof. 
Campbell, of Canada; Prof. Croskery, of Ireland; and Prof. W. G. Blaikie, of Scotland. 

The Programme for 1886 includes the following papers : 

Donald Frazer, of London, on the Salvation Army. 

W. H. Green, of Princeton, Defense of the Revised Version of the Old Testament. 

Robert Flint, of Edinburgh, Criticism of Modern Classifications of the Sciences. 

Principal McVicar, of Montreal, on Romanism in Canada. 

President R. D. Hitchcock, of New York, on Socialism. 

Prok. Francis Brown, of New York, on the HiUites. 

Dr. Craven, of Newark, on the Revision, of the Presbyterian Form of Government. 

Prof. Charteris on Woman's Work in the Church. 

Dr. J. P. Wilson on Lay Preaching. 

Also articles may be expected fiom Prof. A. A. Hodge, Prof. E. D. Morris, Prof. Herrick 
John.son, and others. 

A leading feature in the new volume will be a series of Short, Crisp and Readable Papers 
by well-known Writers on Practical and Literary Themes, which will interest all clas.scs 
of renders. 

The Department of Reviews of recent Theological and Kindred Literature will be 
veiv lull r;in'liil and tli.nuimh. No |,aiiis ui- i'N|,-ii^.. will l.c ■.paicd K. iiiak.- llii- .lci>artiiient 
lii-.-.Miiinriil, and alilc will, is, « linsr nam. > rai i v niii.li w.^-lil, will n. ill ill .ill.' aril. ■!.'-. .m linnlcs 
o|- in,|...iian..f. puLiislicl in Am.ai.a and al.rna.l. lli.' l;i,vii:\V has, durin.n lii. j.a.sl y.-ai', ijiven 
upwaids uf 20(1 clu.vily-ijriuli;<l piiyr.-i l,j this <kijaiiiiwnl, ■levieivnu/ nu Ir.ss lli,iii 24li Jijaynl trini;.-; htj 
37 lUifi'rent reviewers, the mo.'it of them specialists in their several departments. Theie is a Special 
Department for Philosophy. 

Published Quarterly on the First of April, July and October. 

An'Voual Subscription, $j.oo. Single Copies, b'o cents. 



Remittances should be sent to the publishers, 

CH^KLES SORIBN^ER'S SONS, 

743-745 Broadway, New York. 



THE WEEK: 

A Canadian Journal of Politics, Society, and Literature. 
Published every Thursday, at $3 per Annum. 



THE WEEK, "Canada's Literary Journal," appeals by its comprehensive 
table of contents to the different tastes which exist within the circle of a cultured 
home, and will endeavor faithfully to reflect and summarize the intellectual, social, 
and political movements of the day. 

In politics, THE WEEK is thoroughly independent. It is untrammelled 
by party connections, free from .party leanings, unbiassed by party considera- 
tions, its desire being to further, to the utmost of its power, the free and healthy 
development of the Nation. 



PRESS OPIIS^IOIS^S. 

The "Week is one of the most influential journals in Cana,da.—T>-uth, London, England. 

La pensee a large enverfture est condensee en quelques pages dans un style phllosophique, 
chatie, magistT&l.—L'Electeur. 

A most excellent journal.— CTicafiTo Current. 

The Week is sw^erh.— Vanity Fair, Chicago. 

The Week has made a good impression, and occupies a position of no small influence in the 
Dominion. — The. American, N. Y. 

The Week has a personality of its own. Its editorials, especially, are characterized by a 
Catholic and judicial tone that comport well with the dignity of a true exponent of Canadian 
enterprise and culture. — Fortnightly Index. Michigan. 

We can mention with emphatic approval The Week, one of the ablest papers on the conti- 
nent. — Descriptive America. 

The Week maintains the high standard taken by that journal from the first.— ?%e Continent. 

It is a remarkable truth that there is not in the United States a weekly literary publication 
to compare with or even to approach in learning and ability the Toronto Week. Its pages dis- 
play as much insight into all their subjects as those of the London Spectator. —Jersey City Herald. 

The Week has already taken a well-earned position as one of the leading journals among our 
neighbors — Boston Home Journal. 

The Week is rapidly making a place and a reputation, taking high rank among the members 
of the Canadian press.— £o6/o;j Courier. 

Canada has really an addition to first-class journalism in The Week. It is able, high-toned, 
and independent; discusses politics and literature from a dignified standpoint, and provides 
reading which is alik^? stiuiulative to thoughtful people and entertaining and instructive to the 
family circle. — Boston Evening Gazette. 

The contributed articles maintain a high si&TiAaTd..— Philadelphia Progress. 

The Week is certainly good enough to win swccess.— Buffalo News. 

The editorial and contributed articles are of a high order of raerii.— Belfast Republican Journal. 



C. BLACKETT ROBINSON, Publisher, 

5 Jordan Street, Toronto, Ontario. 
Jg]^" Sample Copies sent Free on Application. ''SgB 



Begimiiiigr witli July, 188-5, the MAGAZINE OF 

AMERICAN HISTORY will publish 

a series of papers on 

mCMLWM FROM ill POINTS OF VIEW, 

SPECIAL STUDIES IN ITS HISTORY. 



The unrivalled facilities of the MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY for securing the 
most acceptable and authoritative data on all qnestions of a historical character, and 
through the repeated and urgent solicitations of many persons of eminence and influence, 
this periodical will commence, with the July issue of the present year, the publication of a 
series of 

prepared by active parlieip-jnts in the stirrins scenes described, and by the best of living 
writers. One-fourth of a century luis softened the memories of the great civil conflict, and 
through the renewal of kindly intercour-^e between the North and the Soulh our country is 
now rapidly growing in prospsrity, wealth and power. The moment seems to have fully 
arrived for placing its history from all points of view on permanent record. The study of 
a contest so memorable for the magnitude of its issues and the sacrifices of blood and 
treasure it involved, must necessarily be conducted in the genuine historic spirit. The truth 
not partisanship will be represented. The mere description of battles is not so much a part 
of this important scheme as many other interesting phases of the War, such as its effects 
upon the people of the different sections of the country, and upon the world's future. Fresh 
material will surprise and inform our readers from time to time, with innumerable glimpses 
from behind the scenes, which do not fall readily into the grasp of the annalist or reciter 
of adventures. Beginning with the first great uprising throughout the land, in 1861, the 
method and continuity of these 

will enable the Student of American History to trace the memorable contest authoritatively 
from its inception to its close. It will be not only of interest now, but of surpassing value 
hereafter, as cotemporaneous evidence for the future historian. These papers will be per- 
tinently illustrated with portraits, and also with photographs, and pen-and-ink sketches 
MADE AT THE TIME, and never before published. The MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN 
HISTORY has been so fortunate as to secure a large number of these negatives and drawings 
from distingul.shed sources, which will add immeasurably to the interest and value of the series. 

This magazine is conducted in a spirited and popular manner, and is printed with such 
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CONTENTS OF FIRST SRRIRS.— Continued. 

III. Local Government in Illinois. First published in the Fortnightly 
Keview. By Albert Shaw, A. B. Iowa College, 1879. — Local Gov- 
ernment in Pennsylvania. Bead before the Pennsylvania Historical 

\ Society, May 1, 1882. By E. E. L. Gould, A. B. Victoria University, 

Canada' 1882. Price 30 cents. 

IV Saxon Tithingmen in America. Bead before the American Antiqua- 
rian Society, October 21, 1881. By H, B. Adams. 2d Edition. Price 
50 cents. 

V. Local Government in Michigan, and the Northwest. Bead before the 

Social Science Association, at Saratoga, September 7, 1882. By E. W. 
Bemis, a. B. Amherst College, 1880. Price 25 cents. 

VI. Parish Institutions of Maryland. By Edwakd Ingle. A. B. Johns 

Hopkins University, 1882. Price 40 cents. 

VII. Old Maryland Manors. By John Johnson, A. B. Johns Hopkins 
University, 1881. Price 30 cents. 

VIII. Norman Constables in America. Bead before the New England 
Historic, Genealogical Society, February 1, 1882. By H. B. Adams. 
2nd Edition. Price 50 cents. 

IX-X. Village Communities of Cape Ann and Salem. From the His- 
torical Collections of the Essex Institute. By H. B. Adams.* 

XI. The Genesis of a New England State (Connecticut.) By Alex- 

ander Johnston, A. M. Eutgers College, 1870; Professor of Political 
Economy and Jurisprudence at Princeton College. Price 30 cents. 

XII. Local Government and Free Schools in South Carolina. Bead 
before the Historical Society of South Carolina, December 15, 1882. By 
B. J. Eamage, a. B. Price 40 cents. 

CONTENTS OF SECOND SERIES.— 1884. 

INSTITUTIONS AND ECOHOWICS. -Price ROO. 

I-II. Methods of Historical Study. By Herbert B. Adams, Ph. D. (Heidel- 
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III. The Past and the Present of Political Economy. • By Eichakd T. 

Ely, Ph. D. (Heidelberg). March, 1884; pp. 64.* 

IV. Samuel Adams, The Man of the Town Meeting. By James K. Hos- 

MER, A. M. (Harvard) ; Professor of English and German Literature, Wash- 
ington University, St. Louis. April, 1884 ; pp. 60. Price 35 cents. 

V-VI. Taxation in the United States. By Henry Carter Adams, Ph. D. 
(Baltimore); Professor of Political Economy, University of Michigan. 
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A. B. (Iowa College) ; Professor of Historical and Political Science, Iowa 
College. July, 1884 ; pp. 38. Price 25 cents. 

VIII-IX. Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization. By 
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XII. Land Laws of Mining Districts. By Charles Howard Shinn, A. B. 

(J. H. U.); Editor of the Overland Monthly; December, 1884; pp. by. 
Price 50 cents. 

{Continued on fourth page of cover). 



CONTENTS OF THIRD SERIES.-1885. 

MARYLAND, VIRCIWIA, AND WASHINCTON.-PnceS3.50. 

I. Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States 
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^^'- ^- (Heidelberg). January, 1885; pp. 102. Price 75 cents. 

pJiT^r Local Institutions: -The Land System; Hundred; 
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IV. Recent American Socialism. By Richard T. Ely, Ph D fHeidel- 
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V-VI-yil Maryland Local Institutions :-The Land System- Hun- 

ored; County; Town Py Lewis W. AVii^helm, Ph. D(B?liroore) 

?n-Jr$l50 '''''' ^- ^- ^'- ^^"^' '^'^"^' ^"^ J"^^' 1885 ;PP 130. 

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^ ^^. . "'^A!J.^°"^^i^"*T^J The Relations of the Three Depart- 
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^^■^Vv I'^^'^TvP*^ 1°^ Washington. By John Addison Porter. A. B 
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